Trading Hours for ETFs

[warpinator]

Hi,

My understanding is that ETFs like SPY and QQQ are traded from 04:00 to 20:00, but when I load those charts, I saw candle bars 24 hours, wonder why that is the case?

Well, not exactly 24 hours, on a 30-minute chart for example, everything looks normal from 04:00 to 20:00, a bar is printed every 30 minutes, but I don't get one bar every 30 minute outside 04:00-20:00 window, they are very scattered and random instead, but still I thought since there is no trading outside trading hours, there should be no bars at all? Not sure what I had missed.

Thank you so much!!

[NinjaTrader_ChristopherJ]

Hello warpinator,

Thank you for posting.

The extended trading hours for equities will be from 8:00 AM-8:00 PM EST. If there is a trade reported by the exchange outside these hours you may then see a plot within the chart to depict the execution however this may not be seen every 30 Minutes therefore if there is no execution reported no bar will be visible within the chart.

Let me know if I may be of further assistance.

[warpinator]

Hi Chris,

Thanks so much for your reply, my bad, I didn't realize the time on the chart is my local time (Pacific) and candle bars are printed between 01:00 to 17:00, which is 04:00 to 20:00 Eastern. Every thing is normal.

Thanks again.