Trading halt (futures)
A trading halt is any period during a session when an exchange stops matching orders in an instrument: the scheduled daily break, a limit or circuit-breaker halt, a velocity-logic pause, or an unscheduled technical or regulatory halt. During a halt no trades print, the book may still change, and a chart looks exactly like a dead feed.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Kinds of halt
| Kind | Cause | Typical length |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled break | Daily maintenance, weekend | Fixed by the exchange calendar |
| Price limit | Price reaches a limit level | Product rules: a pause or the rest of the session |
| Circuit breaker | Market-wide stock decline levels | Set by the stock exchange rules |
| Velocity logic | Too many ticks too fast | A few seconds |
| Technical or regulatory | Platform or market incident | Unscheduled |
What a halted market looks like
- No new trades, so bars stop forming and the time-based axis keeps moving.
- Depending on the state, orders may still be entered and cancelled, so the book can change without trades.
- Market-type orders sent into certain halt states are eliminated rather than queued.
- The reopening usually trades through an auction-style match at one price.
Telling a halt from a dead feed
Both show a silent tape. A halt is a market state; a dead feed is a connection problem. Clues: whether other instruments on the same feed still update, whether the connection's status still shows data arriving, and whether the exchange has published a notice. An example of the arithmetic of patience: if a velocity pause lasts about 5 seconds and a reconnection attempt takes 10, reconnecting during the pause doubles the time without data.
In Senzoukria
The market clock computes the scheduled states from the CME Globex calendar in Chicago time: open, daily break from 16:00 to 17:00 CT on weekdays, and closed from Friday 16:00 to Sunday 17:00 CT, each with its own badge; a request with no answer is shown as provider unavailable. Unscheduled halts are not detected, and holidays are not guessed. The connection diagnostic's final step, when everything was accepted but no tick arrives, lists the closed market as a cause only when the calendar says it is closed.
Common mistakes
- Reconnecting repeatedly during a halt.
- Reading the reopening print as a normal aggressive trade.
- Assuming a schedule-based clock knows about unscheduled halts.
Related
In the same section
- Holiday schedule
- Pre-open and IOP
- Trading journal
- Gateway
- Trading plan
- Trading edge
- Playbook
- Trades footprint
This page in other languages
Frequently asked questions
- Can I cancel orders during a halt?
- In CME's reserved state, participants can submit, modify and cancel orders but no matching occurs. Whether your platform and broker let you act during a given halt depends on their systems as well as on the exchange state.
- Why does my chart keep drawing empty time during a halt?
- Because a time axis advances with the clock whether or not trades arrive. Tick, volume and range bars do not advance at all, since they only form on trades.