Gold Market Hours: Is the Gold Market Open Today?

Gold trading hours in every U.S. time zone

The main U.S. gold market, CME Globex, opens Sunday at 6:00 p.m. ET and trades almost around the clock until Friday at 5:00 p.m. ET, stopping for 60 minutes each weekday afternoon. CME publishes those hours in Central Time, 5:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. CT, because the exchange is based in Chicago, which is why schedules copied onto other sites can look inconsistent.

Mountain Time and Arizona

Mountain Time runs two hours behind Eastern, so in Denver or Salt Lake City gold opens at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, apart from the Navajo Nation, so from March to November Phoenix and Tucson line up with Pacific Time and see the Sunday open at 3:00 p.m. In winter they match the rest of Mountain Time at 4:00 p.m.

Alaska and Hawaii

Alaska sits four hours behind Eastern all year, so the Sunday open is 2:00 p.m. there. Hawaii does not change its clocks, so the gap to New York is five hours in winter and six in summer: the market opens at 1:00 p.m. Hawaii time in winter and at noon in summer.

How a 23-hour gold trading day unfolds

Gold never closes in one city and opens in another. Liquidity passes from region to region, and the busy stretches line up with the working day in each financial center. Here is a typical weekday in Eastern Time, using the usual winter and summer relationship between New York and London.

1. 6:00 p.m. ET: Globex reopens after the daily pause. It is morning in Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore; volume is light and spreads are wider.
2. Overnight: the Shanghai Gold Exchange trades in yuan per gram, and Chinese demand shows up as a premium or discount between Shanghai and London prices.
3. About 3:00 a.m. ET: London opens and volume jumps. Most of the world’s wholesale spot gold changes hands in London.
4. 5:30 a.m. ET: the LBMA Gold Price AM auction, held at 10:30 a.m. London time.
5. 8:30 a.m. ET: scheduled U.S. economic data comes out, often the most volatile minute of the day.
6. 10:00 a.m. ET: the LBMA Gold Price PM auction, at 3:00 p.m. London time, which many contracts and ETFs use for valuation.
7. 1:30 p.m. ET: COMEX settlement. Trading continues electronically, but volume thins through the afternoon.
8. 5:00 p.m. ET: the daily one-hour pause begins.

When daylight saving time moves the London auctions

The United States changes its clocks on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. Britain changes on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October. In the gaps, usually two or three weeks in March and one week around the start of November, London is only four hours ahead of New York. The LBMA auctions then land at 6:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. ET, an hour later on the Eastern clock than usual.

Floor hours and screen hours

The New York session times quoted on many sites, starting at 8:20 a.m. ET, trace back to the old COMEX open-outcry trading floor. Almost all gold futures now trade electronically, but the phrase survives because the most active hours in New York still roughly match the old floor session.

Weekends, holidays and after-hours gold prices

The question “is the gold market open now?” has a clear answer during the week and a slightly messier one around weekends and holidays.

Why weekend quotes stand still

No regulated U.S. venue trades gold between Friday at 5:00 p.m. and Sunday at 6:00 p.m. ET. A price shown on Saturday is Friday’s last trade. Some offshore platforms publish “weekend gold” quotes built from their own order books; those are not tradable on the main market and can differ from where Globex actually opens on Sunday.

The Sunday-evening gap

News from the weekend is priced in all at once when Globex reopens, so the first trade on Sunday evening can sit well above or below Friday’s close. The first hour is thin, and spreads are wide. Many online dealers pause or widen their pricing until the market settles.

What “after hours” means for gold

For futures, the afternoon after the 1:30 p.m. settlement is still regular electronic trading. Gold ETFs are different: they follow the stock market’s regular session of 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, so an ETF’s close and the futures price at 5:00 p.m. can diverge. The gold closing price page explains which close each source uses.

Holidays at home and abroad

• U.S. exchange holidays: CME usually runs a shortened session or halts, and there may be no settlement price that day.
• UK bank holidays: no LBMA auctions, and London volume is thin even while New York trades.
• Chinese Lunar New Year and the October National Day holiday: the Shanghai Gold Exchange closes for about a week and Asian physical demand pauses.
• Christmas to New Year: thin volume in every center, which makes moves erratic and easy to over-read.

CME publishes its exact holiday schedule each year, and it can differ from the stock market’s calendar.

Using the schedule when you buy, sell or trade

The hours matter even if you never touch a futures contract, because every retail price in the country is built on the futures and spot market.

Dealers price off the live market

Bullion dealers lock prices against the live futures or spot quote. When the market pauses from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET, or over the weekend, many stop locking new orders or widen their spreads. Placing an order in the middle of the London and New York overlap usually means tighter pricing.

Traders watch the liquid hours

Futures traders care about depth: the number of contracts available near the current price. Depth is greatest when London and New York are both open. Orders placed during the Asian session can fill further from the quoted price. The gold futures guide covers contract sizes and tick values.

Spot quotes keep the same rhythm

Over-the-counter spot gold follows nearly the same weekly rhythm as Globex. The page on XAU/USD explains how that spot quote relates to futures.

Whatever the hour, the current gold price at the top of the site reflects the latest trade, and it freezes at Friday’s close until Sunday evening.

For news-driven moves during those hours, the daily gold market summary records what moved and when.