TAIEX futures night session: hours, holidays and settlement
The TAIEX futures night session runs 15:00–05:00 Taiwan time and belongs to the next trading day; the day session runs 08:45–13:45. There is no night session on the evening before a TAIFEX holiday, and the expiring contract stops trading at 13:30 on the third Wednesday of its delivery month.
By Soren Huang · Published · updated · Editorial policy
Contents
- When does the TAIEX futures night session open and close?
- What are the night session hours in US and UTC time?
- Which days is the night session closed, and when does it close early?
- How does settlement day work and what is the final settlement price?
- What does the night session follow: US index futures or MSCI Taiwan?
- How do you backtest the day and night sessions separately?
- Why does the same indicator period read differently on day-only and full-session data?
- Frequently asked questions
When does the TAIEX futures night session open and close?
The TAIEX futures (台指期) night session (夜盤) runs from 15:00 to 05:00 the next morning, Taiwan time, and the day session runs from 08:45 to 13:45. There is no night session on the evening before a TAIFEX holiday, and the expiring contract stops trading at 13:30 on the third Wednesday of its delivery month.
The night session is TAIFEX's after-hours trading session (盤後交易時段), which lets you trade TAIEX futures while Europe and the US are active. The day session is the regular session that runs while the Taiwan stock market is open. When traders search for 台指期開盤時間 or talk about 台指期早盤, they usually mean the day session and its 08:45 open. When they talk about 台指期 盤後 or 台股 夜盤, they mean the 15:00 to 05:00 session.
One rule decides almost everything else in this article: TAIFEX counts every night-session trade as part of the next trading day. A trading day in TAIFEX's sense is the unit the exchange uses to book trades, settle margin and record daily prices; it starts with the night session at 15:00 and ends with the day session close at 13:45 the following afternoon. The Monday day session is therefore the end of a trading day that began on Friday evening. This is why a full-session daily bar starts at 15:00 and why the evening before a holiday has no night session, as later sections show.
| Session | Opens (Taiwan time) | Closes (Taiwan time) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day session (日盤) | 08:45 | 13:45 | 5 hours |
| Night session (夜盤) | 15:00 | 05:00 next morning | 14 hours |
| Last trading day, expiring contract | 08:45 | 13:30 | 4 hours 45 minutes |
The two breaks are 13:45 to 15:00 in the afternoon and 05:00 to 08:45 in the morning. The Mini-TAIEX (小台) uses the same session hours. Exchanges can change session hours and contract rules, so check the TAIFEX contract specification page for TAIEX Futures before you lock your settings. The free futures market hours tool shows the current sessions in your own time zone.
What are the night session hours in US and UTC time?
The night session is fixed at 07:00 to 21:00 UTC all year, but it moves by one hour on US clocks twice a year, because Taiwan has no daylight saving time and the US does. Daylight saving time is the practice of moving clocks forward by one hour in summer; the US does this from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. Taiwan stays at UTC+8 all year, so its sessions never move.
| Time zone of the data | Day session | Night session | Last-day close |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taiwan (UTC+8) | 08:45–13:45 | 15:00–05:00 next day | 13:30 |
| UTC | 00:45–05:45 | 07:00–21:00 | 05:30 |
| US Eastern, winter (UTC−5) | 19:45–00:45 (starts the evening before) | 02:00–16:00 | 00:30 |
| US Eastern, summer (UTC−4) | 20:45–01:45 (starts the evening before) | 03:00–17:00 | 01:30 |
| US Central, winter (UTC−6) | 18:45–23:45 (the evening before) | 01:00–15:00 | 23:30 (the evening before) |
| US Central, summer (UTC−5) | 19:45–00:45 (starts the evening before) | 02:00–16:00 | 00:30 |
The table shows two traps. In US Eastern time the day session crosses midnight, so one Taiwan session is split across two US calendar dates. And a strategy that "trades the open at 19:45" in Eastern data trades the real 08:45 open only in winter. In summer, 19:45 Eastern is 07:45 in Taiwan, before the day session opens, so the rule finds no bar or fires on the wrong one. The same applies to the night: a rule that "exits at 16:00 Eastern" exits at the real 05:00 night close only in winter.
Follow these steps when your data arrives in a US time zone:
- Find the time zone of the timestamps in the vendor's documentation. Do not guess from the first bar.
- Find out whether a bar is stamped with its start time or its end time. Some platforms use the start, others the end. A 5-minute bar stamped 08:50 in Taiwan time is either 08:45–08:50 or 08:50–08:55.
- Convert all timestamps to Taiwan time (UTC+8) and apply the daylight saving rules of the source zone.
- Check a few known dates. The first day-session bar should start at 08:45 and the first night bar at 15:00 on every day, in both January and July.
Which days is the night session closed, and when does it close early?
There is no night session on the evening of the last trading day before a TAIFEX holiday, and the only early close is the expiring contract at 13:30 on its last trading day. TAIFEX follows the Taiwan Stock Exchange holiday calendar, so every day the cash market is closed is also a day without a TAIEX futures day session. The free stock market holidays tool lists exchange holidays, and the TAIFEX trading calendar is the official source for the year ahead.
The holiday rule follows from the trading-day rule. Because a night session belongs to the next trading day, a night session on the evening before a holiday would belong to a day that does not trade, so TAIFEX does not hold it. The holiday evening itself is different: its night session belongs to the day after the holiday, which does trade, so that night session is held. Friday nights work the same way: the Friday night session trades and belongs to the Monday trading day.
The closed days repeat every year, but most of the exact dates change, because several Taiwan holidays follow the lunar calendar. When a fixed-date holiday falls on a weekend, Taiwan usually gives a makeup day off on the Friday or Monday, and the exchange is closed on that makeup day. Government makeup workdays on Saturdays are not trading days.
| Closed day | Date | What it does to the night session |
|---|---|---|
| New Year's Day | 1 January | No night session on the last trading day before it |
| Lunar New Year | Late January or February; several days, set each year | Longest gap of the year: no night session on the last trading day before the break |
| Peace Memorial Day | 28 February | No night session the evening before |
| Children's Day and Tomb Sweeping Day | 4 April and 4 or 5 April | Often a two-day closure; no night session the evening before |
| Labor Day | 1 May | No night session the evening before |
| Dragon Boat Festival | Lunar date, May or June | No night session the evening before |
| Mid-Autumn Festival | Lunar date, September or October | No night session the evening before |
| National Day | 10 October | No night session the evening before |
Other national holidays and their makeup days appear in the TAIFEX calendar for each year; take the exact dates from that page and record the date you checked it. Unscheduled closures, such as typhoon days, are announced by TAIFEX on the day, so take closed sessions on those days from the announcement rather than from the yearly calendar.
TAIFEX has no half-day sessions of the kind US exchanges use before some holidays. The one early close is the expiring contract, which stops trading at 13:30 on its last trading day while other contract months trade to 13:45. In a backtest, a closed day should have no bars at all, and an evening without a night session should have no night bars; flat bars with zero volume on those dates are a data error, not a quiet market.
How does settlement day work and what is the final settlement price?
The expiring TAIEX futures contract stops trading at 13:30 on the third Wednesday of its delivery month and is settled in cash against a price taken from the Taiwan cash index that afternoon. If that Wednesday is a holiday, TAIFEX moves the last trading day to the next business day. Other contract months keep trading to 13:45 that day as usual.
The final settlement price is the price at which all open positions in the expiring contract are closed out by the exchange. For TAIEX futures, TAIFEX computes it as the simple arithmetic average of the TAIEX index values published during the last 30 minutes before the cash market close on the final settlement day, that is between 13:00 and 13:30. No single print decides the result, and no futures price enters it. Each position is settled in cash at the difference between this price and the position's entry price. The exact formula is on the TAIFEX contract specification page and can change, so check it before you build a rule around it.
This short day causes three common backtest problems:
- Time exits that never fire. A rule such as "close all positions at 13:40" finds no bar at 13:40 in the expiring contract. In near-month data, the position can then be carried into the next contract by the roll, which no real trader would do.
- A short last bar. With 15-minute bars, the session ends after the 13:15–13:30 bar. Any rule that waits for the 13:30–13:45 bar sees nothing.
- A price jump at the roll. Near-month continuous data switches to the next contract after expiry. The price difference between the two months appears as a gap that the market never traded. The guide to TAIEX continuous contract data explains how rolls are built.
The night session adds a fourth point. The night session that starts at 15:00 on settlement Wednesday belongs to Thursday's trading day, and the expired contract no longer exists in it. A strategy on near-month data that is still long at 13:30 has no night bars for that contract to exit on. Mark every last trading day in your test period. The free TAIEX futures settlement dates tool lists them, so you can check trades on those days one by one.
What does the night session follow: US index futures or MSCI Taiwan?
The night session follows the markets that are open during its 14 hours, mainly US stock index futures and the offshore Taiwan index futures, because the Taiwan cash index stops printing at 13:30 and no TAIEX value exists until 09:00 the next morning. A night strategy on 台指期 is therefore a strategy about how Taiwan futures react to prices made elsewhere, not about the Taiwan stock market itself.
Here is what is open while the night session trades, in Taiwan time:
- Taiwan cash market: closed throughout. The 台指期 夜盤 指數 that traders quote in the morning is the night-session futures price, not an index value.
- Hong Kong cash market: open until 16:00, so it overlaps the first hour of the night session.
- European cash markets: open from about 15:00 or 16:00 Taiwan time, depending on European summer time, and through the evening.
- US stock index futures (ES, NQ, YM on CME Globex): open for the whole 15:00–05:00 window. Globex equity futures trade almost round the clock from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon US time, with a daily break at 16:00–17:00 Central time, which is 05:00–06:00 or 06:00–07:00 Taiwan time. The break falls inside the TAIEX morning break, so US futures are quoted during every minute of the TAIEX night session.
- US cash session (09:30–16:00 Eastern): 22:30–05:00 Taiwan time in US winter and 21:30–04:00 in US summer. This is the busiest overlap of the night, with the most volume on both the US futures and the TAIEX night session.
- Offshore Taiwan index futures: SGX FTSE Taiwan Index futures and HKEX MSCI Taiwan futures both have day and after-hours sessions that cover most of the Taiwan night. Until early 2021 the SGX MSCI Taiwan contract was the main offshore reference; the MSCI licence then moved to HKEX and SGX switched to the FTSE Taiwan index. The exact hours are on each exchange's contract page.
For a backtest this has two practical consequences. First, the night session has a clear internal structure: a quiet stretch after the European open, then the US cash open at 22:30 or 21:30, then the US close near the end. A night strategy should state which part of the night it trades, in Taiwan time, because a rule tuned on the US cash hours behaves differently at 17:00. Second, the one-hour shift of the US cash session means that a fixed Taiwan-time rule such as "enter at 22:30" trades the US open in winter and one hour into the US session in summer. If the idea depends on the US open, write the rule relative to the US session or test winter and summer separately.
The night close at 05:00 is often read as a pointer for the 08:45 day open, because the night session has already absorbed the US move. Whether that pointer contains anything a rule can use is a question for a backtest with costs, not an assumption.
How do you backtest the day and night sessions separately?
Decide first whether the strategy trades the day session only, the night session only or the full session, enter exactly that session in Taiwan time, and make the data, the time rules and the holiday calendar agree with that one choice before the first run. The three choices cover different hours of the same tape and cannot be mixed within one test.
| Choice | Session to enter | Good fit when |
|---|---|---|
| Day session only | 08:45–13:45 | You trade during Taiwan working hours, or the idea is built on the cash market's open and close |
| Night session only | 15:00–05:00 | You test an idea that reacts to US or European moves while Taiwan is closed |
| Full session | 15:00–13:45 the next day, with a break 05:00–08:45 | The strategy holds positions overnight, or trades both sessions with one set of rules |
Then check that the settings agree with each other:
- Data and session match. Day-only data with a full-session or night-only setting gives a night session with no bars. Full-session data with a day-only setting must drop the night bars, not merge them into the day.
- Daily bars follow the trading day. Because the night session belongs to the next trading day, a full-session daily bar starts at 15:00 the previous afternoon and ends at 13:45. A daily bar built by calendar date mixes two trading days.
- Time rules sit inside the session. Entry windows, "flat by" times and no-trade periods must fall inside the session you entered, and before 13:30 on last trading days. A night-only strategy's "flat by" time must be before 05:00.
- Holidays are absent, not zero. A closed day should have no bars at all, and the evening before a holiday should have no night bars. A night-only test that finds bars on the evening before Lunar New Year is running on bad data.
- Costs are the same per session. Night-session volume is lower than day-session volume, so slippage assumed from day fills may be too small for the night. Test the night strategy with a wider slippage setting and see whether the result survives.
The tradeoffs between the two data types are covered in night sessions in futures backtests: day-only vs. full-session bars. In AlphaPrime (Valynox), the trading session is part of the backtesting setup, together with data resolution, next-bar execution, fees and slippage. Every candidate strategy is therefore evaluated on the same hours, and a day-only result is never compared with a night-only result by accident.
Why does the same indicator period read differently on day-only and full-session data?
The session setting decides which prices go into each bar, so the same indicator period measures different hours on day-only, night-only and full-session data, even when the formula stays the same. A 20-bar average on day-only data and a 20-bar average on full-session data are two different indicators with the same name. The backtesting settings for trading sessions in AlphaPrime let day-only, night-only and full-session bars run as separate tests, so each 20-bar average comes from the hours you meant to use.
The daily bar is the clearest case. On day-only data, a daily bar is 08:45 to 13:45. On night-only data, it is 15:00 to 05:00. On full-session data, it runs from 15:00 the previous afternoon to 13:45, because that is the TAIFEX trading day. A bar built from 00:00 to 24:00 by calendar date contains the end of one trading day and the start of the next, so its open, high, low and close describe no session that anyone traded.
Intraday bars change in the same way. The day session is 300 minutes long, so it gives 20 bars of 15 minutes. The night session is 840 minutes long and gives 56 bars. With 15-minute bars, a 20-bar moving average on day-only data covers exactly one day session. On full-session data at 09:00, the same 20 bars cover one day bar and 19 night bars, back to about 00:15. The full-session average mostly reflects prices made while the US cash session was open.
Hourly bars add a second effect. If the bars are aligned to the session start, the day session splits into five full hours: 08:45–09:45 through 12:45–13:45. If they are aligned to the clock, the first bar is 08:45–09:00 (15 minutes) and the last is 13:00–13:45 (45 minutes). Short bars have smaller ranges. They pull range-based indicators down and can change which bar a breakout rule fires on.
Gaps change too. The average true range (ATR) is an indicator that measures the typical bar range including any jump from the previous bar's close. With day-only data, the whole overnight move lands in the first bar of each day. With full-session data, the same move is spread across the night bars.
Hypothetical example
The day session closes at 21,900 at 13:45. US markets rise overnight. The night session closes at 22,030 at 05:00, and the next day session opens at 22,050. With day-only data, the 08:45 bar's true range includes a 150-point gap from 21,900. With full-session data, that move is spread over the night bars, and the 08:45 bar shows only a 20-point gap from 22,030. The same 14-bar ATR, and every stop distance based on it, is larger on day-only data on mornings like this one.
What this means if you use AlphaPrime: set the trading session in Taiwan time before you start a search, and keep it fixed across runs. Strategies found and compared under one session definition can be judged against each other; results from different sessions cannot.
Frequently asked questions
What time does the 台指期 夜盤 open and close?
The TAIEX futures night session opens at 15:00 and closes at 05:00 the next morning, Taiwan time (UTC+8). That is 07:00 to 21:00 UTC all year, and 02:00–16:00 US Eastern in winter or 03:00–17:00 in summer. TAIFEX counts the whole night session as part of the next trading day.
Is there a TAIEX futures night session on Friday?
Yes. The Friday night session runs from 15:00 Friday to 05:00 Saturday and belongs to the Monday trading day. Weekend news that arrives after 05:00 Saturday first shows in the Monday 08:45 day-session open.
Is there a night session the evening before a holiday?
No. Because the night session belongs to the next trading day, TAIFEX does not hold it on the evening of the last trading day before a holiday. The holiday evening itself does have a night session if the following day trades, since that session belongs to the day after the holiday. Take the exact dates from the TAIFEX trading calendar.
What is the TAIEX futures final settlement price?
It is the simple arithmetic average of the TAIEX index values published during the last 30 minutes before the cash market close on the final settlement day, the third Wednesday of the delivery month. The expiring contract stops trading at 13:30 that day and open positions are closed in cash at this price. The formula is on the TAIFEX contract specification page and can be changed by the exchange.
What does the TAIEX night session follow?
Mainly US stock index futures, which are quoted for the entire 15:00–05:00 window, and the offshore Taiwan index futures on SGX and HKEX. The Taiwan cash index does not update during the night, so night prices are a reaction to markets open elsewhere. The US cash session, 22:30–05:00 Taiwan time in US winter and 21:30–04:00 in US summer, is the busiest part of the night.