Trading sessions and financial market hours: exchanges, Forex, futures, crypto — and the Republic of Moldova

01The profession and its hours

Trader and investor are prestigious professions in every sense of the word. In New York, London or Frankfurt, the people who execute orders and manage portfolios work under licence, in regulated institutions, and Wall Street became the name of an entire industry precisely because that is where the direction of the world's capital is decided every day. Like every profession, this one has working hours: the trading sessions.

On the financial markets, traders set the price of almost everything humanity produces and consumes — currencies, energy, grain, metals, company shares. Nothing compares with the size of these markets: in April 2025, banks, funds and traders around the world exchanged currencies worth 9.5 trillion dollars a day (Bank for International Settlements, Triennial Survey — BIS Quarterly Review, December 2025). Liquidity on that scale means an order is executed in fractions of a second, almost at any time.

"Almost" is the key word. Every market has its own hours. Stock exchanges open and close the trading session at fixed times. The foreign exchange market works 24 hours a day, five days a week, in four core sessions that follow one another around the globe. Futures stop for an hour a day. The crypto market never stops. The Moldova Stock Exchange holds its session between 10:00 and 13:30.

This page shows, for every market: when it trades, the exact time in Chișinău, the official document the hours come from, and what that means in practice for anyone working from the Republic of Moldova.

02Why do different websites show different hours for the trading sessions?

Because the foreign exchange market has no official timetable. On stock exchanges, the trading session is set by the exchange's rules and published by the exchange. The currency market works over the counter: trades are concluded directly between banks and institutions, with no body that declares an opening time. The "Sydney", "Tokyo", "London" and "New York" sessions are conventions describing each financial centre's period of peak activity, and every source picks its own limits — some take local banking hours, others the window in which volume concentrates. That is why for London you will see both 8:00–16:00 and 8:00–17:00.

Trading.md uses the convention 7:00–16:00 local time for Sydney, 9:00–18:00 for Tokyo and 8:00–17:00 for London and New York. We chose these hours for three reasons. Each session lasts nine hours, the working day of the financial institutions in its centre, and equal intervals make the overlaps easy to read. The Sydney session starts at 7:00 because that moment is 17:00 in New York — when the currency market's trading day closes and the next one opens; so the four sessions hand over to one another with no gap. Tokyo starts at 9:00 because that is when the Japanese financial day begins — the JPX exchange opens at the same hour. The same hours are used in the quotes ticker and in the "Forex sessions in real time" tool, so the site never shows two versions. Exchange hours, by contrast, come from each exchange's official documents, with a link to the source.

What you gain by knowing this: you stop comparing two websites to find out "who is right" — you check which convention each one uses and look at the real liquidity on the chart.

03The trading session on stock exchanges

A stock exchange has a session with a fixed open and close, set by its rules. The closing price of the main session is the day's "official" price: stock indices and the daily value of funds are calculated from it. In the United States there are also extended sessions before and after the main one, with lower liquidity and limit orders only.

The "Session, Chișinău time" column is calculated for today and recalculated automatically whenever a country changes its clocks (the data: the table in chapter 04).

What you gain by knowing this: an order for a US share placed at 10:00 waits for the New York session to open, at 16:30 (9:30 New York time); one for the BVM placed after 13:30 is executed tomorrow.

04Foreign exchange (Forex) sessions: Sydney, Tokyo, London, New York

The sessions refer to the currency market proper: exchanging one currency for another between banks, funds and other institutions, directly, with no central exchange — an over-the-counter (OTC) market. The market works 24 hours a day, five days a week: it opens on Monday 00:00 (Sunday 17:00 New York time) and closes on Saturday 00:00 (Friday 17:00 New York time), while banks work the business hours of their region. Activity therefore moves from one financial centre to the next: it starts in Sydney, continues in Tokyo, then London, and ends in New York. When London and New York work at the same time, liquidity and price movement reach the day's peak. The Sydney session opens as the New York day closes (17:00 New York time, the moment of the daily rollover; between October and March, when Australia is on summer time, one to two hours earlier), so the trading day has no gap at all.

What you gain by knowing this: the 15:00–19:00 window is when London and New York work together — the best liquidity for anyone trading currencies from Moldova.

Session hours in Chișinău time, across the periods of the year

The year starts when Europe moves to summer time and has six periods, bounded by the clock changes in each country; Japan does not change its clocks, and the BVM session is always 10:00–13:30 — it is our own time. The highlighted row is the current period. The Trading.md convention: Sydney 7:00–16:00, Tokyo 9:00–18:00, London and New York 8:00–17:00, local time (chapter 02). The sessions' live status: Forex sessions in real time.

05Futures and listed options: CME Globex and the US exchanges

A futures contract is a standardised instrument with an expiry date, listed and settled through an exchange. The currency market is a market; a future is an instrument structure — there are futures on currencies, stock indices, interest rates, crude oil and natural gas, gold and silver, grains and oilseeds, livestock, Bitcoin and Ether. What links them is a time convention: the futures trading day closes at 00:00 (16:00 Chicago time), and the currency market's daily rollover happens at 00:00 (17:00 New York time) — the same moment, in two time zones.

Most of the world's futures trade on CME Globex, the electronic platform of CME Group (the CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX exchanges in Chicago and New York). It runs from Monday 01:00 (Sunday 17:00 Chicago time) to Saturday 00:00 (Friday 16:00 Chicago time), with a daily one-hour break, 00:00–01:00 (16:00–17:00 Chicago time). Grains and oilseeds (wheat, corn, soybeans) have their own hours, in two sessions: 03:00–15:45 (19:00–7:45 Chicago time) and 16:30–21:20 (8:30–13:20 Chicago time). Crypto contracts have traded 24/7 since 29 May 2026, with a maintenance window at the weekend (CME Group).

Listed options on US shares trade during the exchange session, 16:30–23:00 (9:30–16:00 New York time); late-closing index options until 23:15 (16:15 New York time) (NYSE). CME also lists currency options: they let investors and companies protect themselves against currency risk or take a position on the exchange rate between two currencies — for companies, see hedging for companies.

Sources: cmegroup.com — Trading hours, 2026 calendar; the Grain and Oilseed Futures specifications; nyse.com — Trading Information.

What you gain by knowing this: you can tell a scheduled exchange halt from a platform problem, and you know a futures contract expires — unlike a currency-market position, which rolls over every day.

06The crypto market: no timetable

Crypto platforms work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; the only interruptions are maintenance windows. On most platforms the daily candle closes at 03:00 (00:00 UTC) — a different convention from the currency market, where the day closes at 00:00 (17:00 New York time). Exchange-traded funds on Bitcoin or Ether follow the exchange's hours: the fund's price freezes at the weekend while the asset keeps moving.

07CFDs: the hours follow the reference market

A contract for difference has no hours of its own. The provider follows the hours of the market it takes the price from and publishes each instrument's specifications: CFDs on currencies — 24/5, like the currency market (chapter 04); on indices — almost 24/5, with daily breaks and liquidity concentrated in the reference exchange's hours (chapter 03); on shares — strictly the listing exchange's hours; on metals and energy — the CME Globex schedule (chapter 05); on crypto — 24/7 or with a weekend break, depending on the provider (chapter 06).

What the provider sets is the server time zone: the hour at which the continuous price stream is cut into daily candles. Charts are built from the quotes received from liquidity providers — the price is the same; only the moment the "day" begins differs. On a server set to GMT+2 or GMT+3, the trading day starts with the New York rollover and the week has five daily candles; on a server on GMT or CET, the day is cut differently and six candles can appear, one of them a short Sunday-evening candle.

What you gain by knowing this: you read the instrument's specifications before opening a position, and you know why your chart has 5 or 6 daily candles a week — because of the provider's server time zone, not the price.

08Bonds and government securities

Bonds trade in two ways. Those listed on an exchange — in Bucharest, Chișinău, Frankfurt — follow that exchange's session (chapter 03). The bulk of the bond market, however, is over the counter, between dealers, and has no published session; in the United States the bond market's closing calendar is recommended by the SIFMA association, and early closes are at 21:00 (14:00 New York time).

Bonds are where you first meet the notation T+0, T+1, T+2: T is the trade date, and the number is the count of working days until settlement, the moment money and securities change owner. T+0 means settlement on the same day. Details for every market: chapter 11.

09Precious metals and commodities

Gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas trade as futures on CME Globex, almost continuously, on the schedule in chapter 05. The benchmark prices of precious metals are set in London, through auctions administered by ICE Benchmark Administration: gold at 12:30 (10:30 London time) and 17:00 (15:00 London time), silver at 14:00 (12:00 London time), platinum and palladium at 11:45 (9:45 London time) and 16:00 (14:00 London time) (LBMA).

Grains and oilseeds — wheat, corn, soybeans, soybean oil and meal — trade in Chicago on the two-session schedule in chapter 05. Exporters and importers use these contracts to lock in their selling or buying price in advance (hedging); the Chicago price is also the benchmark against which grain is negotiated in the region.

What you gain by knowing this: you know when the gold benchmark price is fixed and when grain contracts are open — and you can follow or cover the price of your goods, not just learn it the next day.

10Funds, ETFs, pensions

An ETF trades on an exchange, during its hours, like a share. A classic investment fund has no hours: subscriptions and redemptions are made at the net asset value, calculated once a day, with a cut-off time for orders set in the fund's prospectus — usually in the time zone of the country where the fund is registered, not in Chișinău time. Pension contributions follow a monthly calendar, not a clock.

What you gain by knowing this: in a classic fund, an order placed after the prospectus cut-off is executed at the next day's net asset value — check the cut-off time and the time zone it is written in.

11Settlement, banks and payments

A trade is not complete at execution but at settlement, when money and securities change owner (the T+n notation: chapter 08). In the United States the cycle has been T+1 since 28 May 2024; in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Switzerland it is T+2, with the move to T+1 scheduled for 11 October 2027 (ESMA).

What you gain by knowing this: you sell shares on the BVM on Monday and can use the money on Wednesday — plan by settlement, not by execution.

12Central banks and macro data: the calendar, not market hours

Central bank decisions and statistics are published at fixed times, and markets react within seconds. The European Central Bank announces its decisions at 15:15 (14:15 Frankfurt time), with a press conference at 15:45 (14:45 Frankfurt time). The Fed's committee publishes its statement at 21:00 (14:00 New York time). The major US statistics — inflation, employment, GDP — come out at 15:30 (8:30 New York time).

The full calendar, in Chișinău time: the international economic calendar and the Republic of Moldova's economic calendar.

13Holidays and early closes

Every exchange publishes its own calendar, based on its country's holidays: US exchanges follow the federal holidays and are also closed on Good Friday; London — the bank holidays of England; Tokyo — the national holidays and 31 December to 3 January; Frankfurt (Xetra) stays open on some German public holidays; Sydney — the holidays of the state of New South Wales; Bucharest and Chișinău — each country's legal holidays. The currency market does not close for national holidays — only liquidity drops — and in practice stops only for Christmas and New Year. CME Globex publishes the schedule for each holiday about two weeks in advance.

The table is calculated automatically from the exchanges' official calendars, the SIFMA calendar and the Labour Code of the Republic of Moldova (art. 111).

14Frequently asked questions