Trading sessions: ET first, Vietnam time second

Friday 30 October 2026, 20:30 in Hanoi. The US cash market opens at 09:30 ET, and NQ trades 9,255 contracts in that one minute, with its first print (giao dịch khớp đầu tiên) at 28,798.50. On Monday 2 November you sit down at the same 20:30 and the chart barely moves: 290 contracts in the minute. Nothing broke. On Sunday 1 November New York set its clocks back one hour and Vietnam did not, so the open now comes at 21:30 ICT. This lesson puts the futures day on one clock, New York time, and shows you where the activity sits on it, measured on NQ.

Key terms

ET (giờ New York): New York time Definition, UTC−4 in US daylight time and UTC−5 in US standard time. Every time in this academy is written in ET first.

CT (giờ Chicago): Chicago time, always one hour behind ET Definition. CME publishes its hours in CT, so you will see both.

ICT (giờ Việt Nam): Vietnam time, UTC+7 all year, with no daylight saving Definition.

US daylight saving time (giờ mùa hè của Mỹ): the months when US clocks run one hour ahead Definition. In 2026 it ran from 8 March to 1 November; in 2027 it runs from 14 March to 7 November.

Globex (sàn điện tử của CME): CME’s electronic market, where NQ and ES trade from 18:00 ET Sunday to 17:00 ET Friday, with a one-hour daily halt (giờ tạm dừng hằng ngày) from 17:00 to 18:00 ET Definition.

RTH (phiên chính, regular trading hours): in this academy, the US cash-equity session (phiên giao dịch cổ phiếu cơ sở Mỹ, when NYSE and Nasdaq stock exchanges are open), 09:30–16:00 ET Definition. Everything else on Globex is ETH (ngoài giờ chính, extended hours), also called the overnight session.

Trading day (ngày giao dịch): named after the date of its 17:00 ET close, so the session that opens Sunday 18:00 ET is Monday’s Definition. A stop (lệnh dừng lỗ) is an order that exits your trade if price moves against you by a set number of points.

Chart first: one futures day, three clocks

How it works

Learn the day in ET, then convert

Memorise ET times, never Vietnam times: the ET schedule stays fixed; your conversion changes. Vietnam is ET + 12 hours in US standard time (November to March) and ET + 11 in US daylight time (March to November) Definition. Chicago is ET − 1 all year.

• What: Globex opens (Sun to Thu) — ET: 18:00; CT: 17:00; ICT, US standard time: 06:00 next day; ICT, US daylight time: 05:00 next day.

• What: 08:30 releases — ET: 08:30; CT: 07:30; ICT, US standard time: 20:30; ICT, US daylight time: 19:30.

• What: Cash open — ET: 09:30; CT: 08:30; ICT, US standard time: 21:30; ICT, US daylight time: 20:30.

• What: 10:00 releases — ET: 10:00; CT: 09:00; ICT, US standard time: 22:00; ICT, US daylight time: 21:00.

• What: Fed decision (8 a year) — ET: 14:00; CT: 13:00; ICT, US standard time: 02:00 next day; ICT, US daylight time: 01:00 next day.

• What: Cash close — ET: 16:00; CT: 15:00; ICT, US standard time: 04:00 next day; ICT, US daylight time: 03:00 next day.

• What: Daily halt — ET: 17:00–18:00; CT: 16:00–17:00; ICT, US standard time: 05:00–06:00; ICT, US daylight time: 04:00–05:00.

The releases (số liệu kinh tế công bố theo lịch) are scheduled US data. The 08:30 ET slot carries the inflation report (CPI), the monthly jobs report and weekly jobless claims; the 10:00 ET slot carries monthly business surveys such as the ISM indexes (chỉ số khảo sát quản trị mua hàng ISM) Definition. The exact days come from the public calendars of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve; M8.01 and REG6.01 cover what happens around them.

Our lab’s tick recorder agrees with CME’s published hours: across 60 NQ sessions there was no trade between 17:00 and 18:00 ET, and the first trade of every session printed at 18:00 ET MeasuredNQ.

Where the volume is

Globex is open 23 hours, but NQ does not trade evenly across them. In our 60-session sample, the 6.5 cash-session hours, 28% of the clock, carried 71.8% of all NQ contracts MeasuredNQ. The overnight hours carried about a quarter, and the hour after the cash close about 3%.

Inside the cash session the shape is a U (hình chữ U): heavy at the open, a slow fade to the early afternoon, a rise into the close MeasuredNQ. The 09:30–10:00 ET half hour carried 18.3% of cash-session volume; 13:30–14:00 carried 4.4%; 15:30–16:00 carried 9.4%. Movement follows the same curve: the average high-to-low range was 181 points in the first half hour and 62 points from 13:30 to 14:00. The same intraday U-shape was documented on US stocks and index returns (Wood, McInish and Ord, 1985; Andersen and Bollerslev, 1997; literature pointers cited in MR-08, not re-read in our lab) PlausibleOther market.

On top of the smooth U sit jumps at fixed minutes.

At 09:29 ET a median session traded 931 contracts; at 09:30, 6,263. The 08:30 minute roughly doubles the minute before it on a typical day, and much more on a big release day. The 15:59 minute is the final minute before the 16:00 ET cash close and sits inside the daily equity-index settlement window Definition; MKT1 covers settlement and the close in detail.

What the busy hours mean for you

Activity tells you when NQ moves, not when you have an edge. A bigger move pays a trader with an edge faster and costs a trader without one faster. What activity does change is your arithmetic: a stop that is wide at 13:30 ET is narrow at 09:30 ET. You will size positions for this in RSK1.05; for now, notice the ratio.

From Vietnam, the busy part of the day is your evening and night: 20:30 to 04:00 ICT in winter, 19:30 to 03:00 in summer. The quiet overnight hours fall in your working day. EV2.03 covers choosing one rested window; MKT2.08 covers trading outside RTH.

What the data says

Worked example: one stop, two hours

You plan a long trade in 1 MNQ (hợp đồng Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100, $0.50 per 0.25-point tick, so $2 per point; M0.05 covers contract sizes). Your stop sits 15 points below entry: 60 ticks, $30 of risk.

How big is 15 points? It depends on the clock. In our sample the median high-to-low range of a single minute was 7.5 points at 13:59 ET and 49.4 points at 09:30 ET MeasuredNQ. At 13:59 your stop is two typical minutes wide; at 09:30 it is less than a third of one.

The real day from the hook: on 30 October 2026 the 09:30 ET minute ran from 28,748.25 to 28,809.00, a 60.75-point range, four of your stops. The first hour spanned 245.75 points on 187,405 contracts.

The mirror. Short 1 MNQ with the stop 15 points above entry: the same arithmetic, the same $30, the same “less than a third of one opening minute”. Range is not direction; a wide minute can reach a stop on either side.

The failure case. The clock can be right and the day still wrong. On Monday 7 September 2026, Labor Day, the US cash market was closed and NQ futures stopped at 13:00 ET: 88,080 contracts all session against a median session of 547,154. A trader who sat down at 20:30 ICT that evening was waiting for an open that did not exist. Holidays and early closes are on CME’s published holiday calendar; MKT1.04 covers them.

Common mistake: treating the busy hours as the profitable hours. 72% of volume in the cash session is a base rate of activity, not an edge. It tells you where the moves are, not that you will be on the right side of them.

Common mistake: setting your alarm in Vietnam time and leaving it. An alarm that is right in July is an hour early all winter; an alarm set in winter is an hour late from mid-March. Convert from ET every time US clocks change.

Do it on the platform

If you execute in TopstepX and read order flow in ATAS X, check which clock each platform shows before comparing timestamps (PLAT2.08). Some prop firms publish restrictions around scheduled releases in ET or CT windows; check your firm’s current help-center rules and convert them with the same table (PROP2.06 covers Topstep’s terms on dated rule cards).

Drill: your week on one clock

1. Write the ET times: 08:30, 09:30, 10:00, 14:00, 16:00, 17:00.
2. Convert each to CT and to ICT for this week, and for a week in July.
3. Mark which conversions change on 14 March 2027.

Recap

• Learn the futures day in ET: Globex 18:00–17:00, cash session 09:30–16:00, halt 17:00–18:00, releases at 08:30 and 10:00. Chicago is ET − 1.
• Vietnam is ET + 12 in US standard time and ET + 11 in US daylight time; convert at every US clock change.
• In our 60-session NQ sample the cash session carried 71.8% of volume, U-shaped, with jumps at fixed minutes.
• Busy hours change the size of a move, so a stop in points means different things at different hours. Activity is a base rate, not an edge.

Further reading

• CME Group: trading hours for equity index futures
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics: release calendar (CPI, jobs report)
• Federal Reserve: FOMC meeting calendar
• Andersen, T. and Bollerslev, T. (1997), “Intraday periodicity and volatility persistence in financial markets”, Journal of Empirical Finance 4(2–3).
• Wood, R., McInish, T. and Ord, J. K. (1985), “An investigation of transactions data for NYSE stocks”, Journal of Finance 40(3).
• Our lab: in 60 NQ sessions (August to November 2026) the cash session carried 71.8% of volume, and the 09:30 ET minute traded about seven times the minute before it.

Prerequisites: M0.02 Core terminology, M0.03 Order types and order matching · Next: M0.05 NQ, ES, MNQ, MES contracts and margin, which turns the point ranges in this lesson into dollars · Goes deeper: MKT1.04 (halts, holidays, early closes and the DST weeks), EV2.03 (choosing your window from Vietnam)

Educational content only, not financial advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss. Not affiliated with Topstep; firm rules change; check the Topstep help center.