What it means
In the pre-open session orders are collected for eight minutes and matched at a single opening price before normal trading starts at 9:15. The first and last half hours are usually the busiest. Brokers close open intraday positions automatically shortly before 3:30 pm. There is no trading on exchange holidays.
Example
In winter, 9:15 am in Mumbai is 3:45 am in London and 10:45 pm the evening before in New York.
In practice
The session has a rhythm. The opening minutes absorb overnight news and are the most volatile, the middle of the day is quieter, and activity picks up again after 2:30 pm as intraday traders close positions and European markets are open.
Traders plan around those phases: some trade only the first hour, others wait for it to pass. The pre-open price shows where the market intends to start before a single normal trade is made.
What to watch for
Unlike forex or crypto, the market is shut for most of the day, so news released in the evening or overnight shows up as a gap at 9:15. A stop-loss cannot protect a position held overnight from that gap.
Related terms
4 terms- Trading sessionThe hours when a major financial centre is active; forex moves from Sydney to Tokyo to London to New York.
- NSE and BSEIndia's two main stock exchanges: the National Stock Exchange, home of the Nifty 50, and the Bombay Stock Exchange, home of the Sensex.
- GIFT NiftyNifty 50 futures priced in US dollars and traded at GIFT City in Gujarat for about 21 hours a day.
- Intraday and deliveryThe two ways to trade shares in India: intraday, where the position is closed the same day, and delivery, where the shares are paid for in full and kept.