Market close, holidays, early closes: do rules change?

TL;DR

The rules don’t change, but the market does: hours shift, liquidity dries up, spreads widen, and people get clipped. Trade accordingly.

How it works

• Your risk limits and window rules are the same.
• What changes is execution quality (spreads, slippage, liquidity), especially into closes and holiday sessions. That’s out of our hands. The holidays are crazy.

Common gotchas

• Treat the last 30–60 minutes before a close as a low-liquidity zone.
• If you must be flat for weekend/holiday rules, close earlier than you think you need to.
• Don’t “gap hunt” into a close/reopen window. That’s literally the behavior our risk team doesn’t tolerate and can close your account for.

Example

You’re up on Friday and you could squeeze one more trade in the last 10 minutes. The spread says “lol.” You either get slipped, stopped, or both. Don’t donate.

Related FAQs

• Weekend holding: allowed? (and what the Weekend Add-on changes)
• Gap trading: What’s allowed vs “holding into close to exploit reopen”
• Slippage & micro-breaches: “I only went over by $0.01”