COMEX Trading Hours & Holidays: The One Mistake That Costs Traders Real Money

If there is one misconception that quietly drains money from commodity traders, it is this: thinking COMEX works like a stock exchange.

You have probably seen it in practice. A trader checks the clock at 4:00 PM New York time, sees gold barely moving, and assumes the market has closed for the day. Or a position is left open overnight, and the trader wakes up to a gap that could have been managed if only they understood when the market actually operates.

COMEX does not have a traditional “closing bell” that ends the day. It is not a 9:30-to-4:00 market. The sooner a trader internalizes that, the fewer unpleasant surprises they will face.

The Real Structure of COMEX Trading Hours

COMEX, owned and operated by CME Group, runs on a nearly continuous electronic schedule through the CME Globex platform. The COMEX market open time is best understood as a rolling cycle rather than a single morning bell.

Regular electronic trading for most COMEX products begins Sunday evening and runs through Friday afternoon, with a brief daily maintenance window in between. The traditional floor session, which still defines the “regular” hours many references cite, runs from 8:20 AM to 1:30 PM Eastern Time Monday through Friday. But for the vast majority of participants trading electronically, the effective COMEX market hours stretch far beyond that window.

For gold futures specifically, the electronic session has historically opened at 6:00 PM ET on Sunday and closed at 5:00 PM ET on Friday, with a 60-minute break each day. More recently, CME Group has moved toward expanded schedules for certain contracts, reflecting the reality that metals trade around the clock globally.

The practical takeaway: if you are trading COMEX gold, silver, or copper, the market is almost always “open” during weekdays. The question is not whether you can trade, but whether there is meaningful liquidity at the moment you want to trade.

Why “COMEX Market Closing Time Today” Is a Misleading Question

Searching for the COMEX market closing time today will return a frustratingly inconsistent set of answers. Some sources will say 1:30 PM ET. Others will point to 5:00 PM ET. Neither is wrong—they are describing different sessions.

The confusion matters because the COMEX market closing time today determines when daily settlement prices are calculated, when margin requirements are finalized, and when certain order types expire. For traders holding futures contracts, the daily settlement window carries real financial consequences. Missing it means your position is marked to a price you did not anticipate.

For traders in India, this confusion is amplified. The COMEX market open time in India falls in the evening, aligning with the U.S. trading day. During U.S. daylight saving time, the most active COMEX session corresponds roughly to 6:30 PM to 12:00 AM IST. When daylight saving ends, that window shifts to approximately 7:30 PM to 1:00 AM IST. Indian traders who assume the market “closes” at a fixed local time are likely to miss the periods of highest volatility and liquidity.

The Holiday Trap: Not All Closures Are Obvious

COMEX observes a defined holiday calendar, but the full picture is more nuanced than a simple list of closed days.

In 2026, COMEX observes full closures on days including New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day (observed), Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. That is the straightforward part.

The complications come from early close days. The day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve are not full holidays, but trading ends early—typically at 1:00 PM ET rather than the usual close. For a trader in India, that early close translates to a surprisingly early evening cutoff. A position that seemed safe to hold through the “normal” session might be subject to settlement at an unexpected time.

There is also the question of which products trade on holidays. Some COMEX contracts follow different schedules than others. Assuming that “COMEX is closed” means every product is untradeable can lead to missed opportunities or, worse, unmanaged risk.

What This Means in Practice

The traders who navigate COMEX hours and holidays well share a common habit: they do not rely on memory. They check the schedule when it matters, and they keep their positions visible even when they are not at their desk.

This is where a tool like Camovia Tray fits naturally into the workflow. Camovia Tray turns MetaTrader 5 or MetaTrader 4 into a system tray utility, which means a trader can hover over the tray icon and see live quotes without opening the terminal. More importantly for holiday and session management, it lets you view open positions at a glance—symbol, direction, lot size, entry price, and current profit or loss—right from the tray popup.

Consider a realistic scenario. It is the day before a COMEX holiday. You have a gold position open. You are not planning to sit in front of the screen all evening, but you want to know if the market is approaching an early close or if your position needs attention. With Camovia Tray, you can check your position from the tray without launching the full MT5 interface. If the numbers look off, you can close the position with a two-step confirmation (click “Close,” then “Confirm”) directly from the popup[citation: knowledge base]. If everything is fine, you move on with your evening.

This is not about replacing a full trading platform. It is about maintaining awareness when you are not actively trading—which, for anyone navigating COMEX schedules across time zones, is most of the time.

The Simple Fix

The mistake is not ignorance of a specific date or a particular session boundary. The mistake is treating COMEX like a market with a predictable, human-scale schedule. It is not.

COMEX market hours operate on a global clock. COMEX market open time in India shifts with U.S. daylight saving. COMEX market closing time today depends on which session you mean and whether a holiday or early close is in effect.

The traders who avoid costly errors are the ones who stay connected to their positions without being chained to a terminal. Whether that means checking quotes from the system tray or confirming a close during an unexpected early session end, the goal is the same: know what is happening, even when you are not watching.