Trading day
Family VII · Market & styles
Not to be confused with forex day trading, day trading, day order.
Trading day is a calendar day on which a specific market or exchange conducts its regular session. It is not the same as a calendar day: weekends, public holidays and unscheduled closures are excluded, and the exact set of trading days varies by exchange, country and asset class. The term also fixes the timing of settlement, expiry and reporting deadlines that are counted in days.
What counts as a trading day
A trading day is defined by the calendar of the venue or market concerned. Equity exchanges typically observe national public holidays; currency markets trade nearly continuously from Monday to Friday but still have reduced-liquidity periods around major holidays; futures and commodity markets follow their own holiday schedules.
Because schedules differ, the same date can be a trading day in one market and a closure in another. Contracts and regulations that refer to a number of trading days therefore depend on the calendar of the relevant market, not on a single global calendar.
Where the count matters
Deadlines expressed in trading days include settlement periods, notice periods for derivatives, and reporting or filing windows. Counting calendar days instead of trading days produces a different date whenever a weekend or holiday falls inside the interval.
- Settlement: a T+2 equity settlement counts two trading days after the trade date, skipping weekends and holidays.
- Expiry and notice: option and futures notice periods are often stated in trading days before expiry.
- Reporting: regulatory filing windows may be counted in business or trading days depending on the jurisdiction.
Worked example
If the Monday were a public holiday on that exchange, settlement would move to the next trading day, Tuesday.
Often confused with
- forex day trading
- Forex day trading is a trading style in which positions in currency pairs are opened and closed within a single session, whereas a trading day is simply a day on which a market is open; the visible sign is that one describes activity and the other describes the calendar.
- day trading
- Day trading is the practice of buying and selling the same instrument within one session to avoid overnight exposure, while a trading day is the session itself; the visible sign is that day trading names a strategy and trading day names a date.
- day order
- A day order is an instruction that expires at the end of the session if unfilled, whereas a trading day is the session that determines when that expiry occurs; the visible sign is that a day order is an instruction and a trading day is a period.