CME trading hours and daily break

CME trading hours for equity index futures run from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 16:00 Chicago time, with a daily break from 16:00 to 17:00 during which no quotes or trades are published. Outside those hours a chart cannot receive new data, and a silent feed is expected rather than a fault.

Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026

The weekly and daily schedule

For CME equity index futures the electronic session is close to continuous during the week. It opens on Sunday at 17:00 Chicago time, pauses each weekday between 16:00 and 17:00, and closes for the weekend on Friday at 16:00. Each 17:00 reopen starts a new trade date.

During the one-hour pause the matching engine does not match trades and no market data is disseminated; what happens to resting orders across the break is defined by the exchange and the broker, not by the chart. Other CME product groups keep different hours; the times here are the equity-index timetable as shown in the application and should be verified on the exchange's trading-hours page for any other product.

  • Weekly open: Sunday 17:00 Chicago time.
  • Daily break: 16:00 to 17:00 Chicago time, Monday to Thursday.
  • Weekly close: Friday 16:00 Chicago time.
  • Exchange holidays follow a separate calendar published by CME Group.

What the schedule does to a chart

  • Time bars stop advancing during the break; tick, volume and range bars simply do not close.
  • A history download outside trading hours returns nothing new, because nothing was published.
  • The bar that spans the break is the last bar of the old session, not the first bar of the new one.
  • Session-anchored studies reset at 17:00, so the first minutes after the break begin a fresh session delta, VWAP and range.

In Senzoukria

The history screen of the desktop application labels these states explicitly instead of showing an error. The badge 'Market closed' appears with the explanation that CME futures trade from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 16:00 Chicago time and that outside that window no tick is published. The badge 'Daily break' opens the panel titled 'Daily break — 16:00 to 17:00 Chicago time', which states that the session pauses one hour a day, that quotes stop while the connection stays open, and that trading resumes at 17:00 CT.

A third badge, 'Provider unavailable', distinguishes a data-source outage from a scheduled closure. Cached sessions remain fully usable during a closure: footprint, profiles and indicators compute on what is already downloaded, and a drained session can be replayed.

Common mistakes

  • Reporting a connection bug at 16:30 Chicago time.
  • Expecting the settlement price to print as a trade during the break.
  • Forgetting that a Friday afternoon chart in Europe is still inside the CME week until 16:00 Chicago.
  • Mixing an exchange holiday with an early close; the two are listed separately by the exchange.

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Frequently asked questions

Why is my chart frozen between 16:00 and 17:00 Chicago time?
Because the exchange is in its daily maintenance break. No trades or quotes are published, so the chart has nothing to draw. The connection typically stays open and data resumes on its own at 17:00; the application shows a 'Daily break' badge for this period.
Do all CME futures share the same hours?
No. Equity index futures follow the schedule above, but agricultural, energy and some other product groups have different opens, breaks and settlement windows. Check the trading-hours page of the specific product on the exchange's site.
Can I still work with the chart when the market is closed?
Yes. Anything already in the local cache opens, scrolls and computes as usual. Only new history requires an open market, and the application will fetch it automatically once trading resumes.

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