Extended Hours

Not all trading happens during regular market hours. Earnings announcements, economic reports, and global events can move prices dramatically outside the standard 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM window. Stratifyre provides extended-hours data so your strategies and scanners can account for what happens before the opening bell and after the closing one.

Trading sessions by asset class

US Equities

US equities trade across three sessions:

Session	Hours (Eastern Time)	Description
Pre-market	4:00 AM - 9:30 AM ET	Early trading before the regular session. Liquidity is lower and spreads are wider.
Regular hours	9:30 AM - 4:00 PM ET	The main trading session. Highest liquidity and tightest spreads.
After-hours	4:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET	Trading after the regular close. Similar to pre-market in terms of liquidity.

Most trading volume occurs during regular hours. Pre-market and after-hours sessions typically have lower volume, wider bid-ask spreads, and higher volatility. However, these sessions can produce significant price moves – especially around earnings releases, which often happen before 9:30 AM or after 4:00 PM.

Futures

Futures markets operate on a nearly 24-hour schedule, with only brief maintenance breaks:

Exchange	Approximate Hours (Eastern Time)
CME Group (ES, NQ, etc.)	Sunday 6:00 PM - Friday 5:00 PM ET, with a daily break from 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM ET
NYMEX (CL, NG, etc.)	Similar to CME Group
CBOT (ZB, ZN, etc.)	Similar to CME Group
ICE	Varies by product

The nearly continuous nature of futures trading means that strategies and scanners can operate around the clock on weekdays, capturing overnight moves driven by Asian and European markets.

Cryptocurrency

Crypto markets are the simplest from a scheduling perspective:

Detail	Value
Trading hours	24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year
Breaks	None

There are no extended hours for crypto because there are no regular hours – the market is always open. Your crypto strategies and scanners run continuously with no session boundaries.

Using extended hours in strategies

By default, Stratifyre strategies for US equities operate during regular hours only. You can enable extended-hours data to include pre-market and after-hours activity.

When to enable extended hours

Consider enabling extended hours if your strategy:

• Trades earnings reactions. Many of the biggest price moves happen in pre-market or after-hours when earnings are released. Without extended-hours data, your strategy would miss these moves entirely.
• Uses overnight gap analysis. If your strategy factors in the gap between yesterday’s close and today’s open, extended-hours data provides a more complete picture of how that gap developed.
• Needs earlier entries. Some breakout strategies benefit from entering positions in the pre-market, before the regular-session crowd arrives.
• Monitors risk outside of regular hours. If you hold positions overnight, extended-hours data lets your scanners track price movements that could affect your open trades.

When to keep regular hours only

Regular-hours-only mode is often the better choice when:

• Your strategy relies on volume-based indicators. Pre-market and after-hours volume is significantly lower, which can distort indicators like VWAP, OBV, and volume-based moving averages.
• You are backtesting a strategy designed for regular hours. Including extended-hours data in a backtest changes the characteristics of every bar, potentially producing misleading results.
• You want cleaner signals. Extended-hours price action is noisier due to lower liquidity. Restricting to regular hours can reduce false signals.

How to enable extended hours

1. In the Strategy Builder or Scanner configuration, look for the Session setting.
2. Select Extended Hours (or All Sessions) instead of Regular Hours Only.
3. Save your changes.

When extended hours are enabled, your data bars will include pre-market and after-hours activity. A daily bar, for example, will span from 4:00 AM to 8:00 PM ET instead of 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET.

Caution

Be mindful that extended-hours data changes the shape of your bars. A daily bar with extended hours has 16 hours of data (4 AM to 8 PM), while a regular-hours daily bar has 6.5 hours (9:30 AM to 4 PM). This can significantly affect indicator calculations. If you switch a strategy from regular to extended hours, rerun your backtest to understand the impact.

Extended hours and scanners

Scanners can also be configured to evaluate instruments during extended-hours sessions. This is useful for:

• Pre-market scanning – Find instruments that are making big moves before the regular session starts. For example, scan for stocks gapping up more than 3% in the pre-market.
• After-hours monitoring – Track how instruments react to earnings or news released after the close.
• Overnight futures scanning – Monitor futures contracts during the overnight session to catch moves driven by international markets.

Tip

A popular setup is to run one scanner on pre-market data (4:00 AM - 9:30 AM ET) looking for gap candidates, and a separate scanner on regular hours for your primary trading strategy. This way, you can prepare your watchlist before the open without mixing pre-market noise into your main scan.

Key things to remember

• Liquidity is lower outside regular hours. Expect wider spreads and more volatile price moves in pre-market and after-hours sessions. Strategies that work during regular hours may behave very differently in extended sessions.
• Not all instruments trade in extended hours. While most large-cap US stocks have active pre-market and after-hours trading, smaller and less liquid stocks may have little or no extended-hours activity.
• Futures are naturally extended. Because futures trade nearly 24 hours, there is no separate “extended hours” toggle – you always get the full session.
• Crypto has no session boundaries. Every timeframe and every scanner runs 24/7 for crypto instruments.
• Historical data includes extended hours. Stratifyre stores extended-hours data alongside regular-hours data, so you can include or exclude it as needed in both backtests and live scanners.

Next steps

• Review the Timeframes page to understand how data resolution interacts with trading sessions.
• See Supported Assets for more details on the trading hours of each asset class.
• Set up a Scanner for pre-market or after-hours monitoring.