Trades cannot be opened, modified, or closed once the market is closed because the order book is no longer active.
Market Hours and Liquidity
Each asset class has defined trading hours. For example:
Forex runs almost 24 hours but closes on the weekends: Friday at 5:00 PM EST and reopen on Sunday at 5:00 PM EST.
Specific instruments: Some assets follow their own exchange hours and are only tradable during those sessions.
Metals, indices, and commodities follow exchange hours (e.g., CME, LME, NYSE).
When the market is closed, there are no active buyers or sellers, which means the broker cannot match your closing order. You’ll need to wait until the market for that instrument reopens before managing your positions.
Execution Rules
Closing a trade is essentially sending a market order in the opposite direction of your position. If the market is closed:
There is no bid/ask spread being quoted.
No execution price can be guaranteed.
The broker’s system disables the ability to send close/modify requests until the next session.
Broker Restrictions
Pending orders (stop loss, take profit, limit/stop orders) remain active even while the market is closed. But these will only trigger once the market reopens and prices begin updating again.
Weekend Gaps and Risk
If you hold trades over the weekend or holidays, your position remains open until the market reopens. On open, the price may gap significantly, causing your trade to close at a worse or better level than expected. This is why some traders prefer to manually close positions before the session ends.