Upcomers Futures runs on DXtrade, and every instrument you can trade is a CME Group product. That includes contracts listed on CME, CBOT, COMEX, and NYMEX. They all trade electronically on the same venue: CME Globex.

Because it is one venue, one set of session rules governs the whole platform. The outer trading window is identical for the S&P 500, for Gold, for Crude Oil, and for the Euro. What differs between them is only the high-liquidity "day session" inside that window, covered further down.

A quick note on time zones. CME publishes its hours in Central Time (CT). Prop traders usually think in Eastern Time (ET). ET is always CT plus one hour. This article leads with ET and shows CT in parentheses. US daylight saving shifts ET and CT together, so the numbers below hold year round.

Weekly open (Sunday reopen): 6:00 PM ET (5:00 PM CT).

Weekly close (Friday close): 5:00 PM ET (4:00 PM CT).

From the Sunday evening open, the market trades roughly 23 hours per weekday, taking one short break each day. Saturday is fully closed. Most of Sunday is closed too, right up until the 6:00 PM ET reopen.

Sunday reopen. The first hours after the Sunday open are thin. Spreads are wide, and prices can gap away from Friday's close as the market absorbs any weekend news. There is no maintenance break before the Sunday open. The market simply comes to life at 6:00 PM ET.

Friday close. At 5:00 PM ET everything goes dark for the weekend. There is no Friday evening reopen. Nothing trades again until Sunday at 6:00 PM ET.

Weekend risk. Because nothing trades Saturday and most of Sunday, news that breaks over the weekend shows up as a gap at the Sunday reopen. Thunderbolt Legacy explicitly permits weekend holds. Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard allow overnight holds. On any of them, if you carry a position over the weekend you are exposed to that Sunday gap.

Every trading day pauses for a 60-minute maintenance window: 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 5:00 PM CT), Monday through Thursday.

During this hour the market is halted. You cannot place, modify, or execute orders. Resting orders sit idle until the reopen. Behind the scenes, CME rolls the trading day to the next business date and runs end-of-day clearing, including variation margin processing. (Daily settlement prices themselves are struck earlier, at each product's own day-session close, not during this break.)

So the daily rhythm looks like this: open at 6:00 PM ET, trade about 23 hours, close at 5:00 PM ET the next day, break for one hour, reopen at 6:00 PM ET. On Friday the 5:00 PM ET close is the weekly close, so there is no 6:00 PM reopen until Sunday.

Gap risk into the break. The 5:00 to 6:00 PM ET window is very low liquidity. A position held into the break can reopen at 6:00 PM ET at a noticeably different price. Something that looked fine at 4:55 PM ET can gap against you at the reopen, and that move lands in the new trading day.

This is the single most important concept on this page.

CME defines its trading day from 5:00 PM CT to 4:00 PM CT the next day, which is 6:00 PM ET to 5:00 PM ET the next day. The trading day is not the calendar day. The 5:00 PM ET (4:00 PM CT) instant is the boundary where one trading day ends and the next begins. It is the point where CME rolls the clearing business date and processes end-of-day margin. It is the futures industry standard "new day" marker. (Official daily settlement prices are a separate thing, struck earlier at each product's day-session close.)

Because of this, Upcomers anchors the daily drawdown reset to 5:00 PM ET. Not midnight, and not 00:00 UTC. When the CME trading day flips at 5:00 PM ET, your daily loss limit resets for the new trading day.

Important: if you also trade Upcomers equity or MT5 products, those reset on a 00:00 to 23:59 UTC day. Futures on DXtrade do not. Futures use 5:00 PM ET. Do not carry the UTC habit over to your futures account.

What the 5:00 PM ET reset means in practice:

One trading day. Your daily drawdown limit measures losses inside one CME trading day. That day begins at the 6:00 PM ET reopen and the clock rolls over at 5:00 PM ET.

The floor. The limit is set from the higher of your equity or balance at the 5:00 PM ET snapshot, times one minus the daily drawdown percent. That fixed floor is what your equity cannot fall below during the trading day.

Fresh budget. At 5:00 PM ET your daily loss allowance refills for the next trading day. Losses booked before 5:00 PM ET do not carry into the next day's calculation.

Positions stay open. A trade held across 5:00 PM ET counts toward the old day up to 5:00 PM ET, then toward the new day after 6:00 PM ET. The position is untouched. Only the day counter resets.

A concrete example. On a $100,000 Thunderbolt Classic or Vanguard account the daily loss budget is 2%, or $2,000. If you are down $1,500 at 4:55 PM ET, you have only $500 of room left. At 5:00 PM ET that budget refills to the full $2,000 for the new trading day. Your open position and its live P&L do not reset, only the daily-loss counter does.

How this maps to each program:

Thunderbolt Legacy carries a 3% daily drawdown that resets at 5:00 PM ET, just like Classic and Vanguard. On a $100,000 Legacy account that is a $3,000 daily budget, versus $2,000 on Classic and Vanguard. All three programs also use real-time equity trailing drawdown, so the 5:00 PM ET boundary matters on every account.

Inside the Globex window, traders talk about two kinds of hours.

RTH (Regular Trading Hours) is the day session. It is the core high-liquidity window that lines up with the underlying US cash market for that product. Highest volume, tightest spreads. Charts often default to an "RTH only" view.

ETH (Extended or Electronic Trading Hours) is everything else inside the Globex window: the overnight, pre-market, and post-market electronic session. Lower volume, wider spreads, more gap sensitivity. On a chart this is often shown as the full "Globex" or "24h" view.

Be clear on one thing. RTH and ETH are liquidity and chart concepts. They do not change when Upcomers lets you trade. On DXtrade you can trade the full Globex session, subject to the maintenance break and your program's overnight rules. RTH vs ETH matters for volume, spread quality, and how a chart is drawn, not for whether the order desk is open.

The equity index, metals, energy, and FX products below share the identical outer Globex window (Sunday 6:00 PM ET to Friday 5:00 PM ET, with the daily 5:00 to 6:00 PM ET break). Only the RTH day session differs, because each product's underlying cash market opens and closes at a different time. Other CME families such as grains, livestock, rates, and crypto run on their own session schedules, so check CME's official trading-hours page for the exact per-product hours.

In Central Time the RTH sessions are: Equity Index 8:30 AM to 3:15 PM, Metals 7:20 AM to 12:30 PM, Energy 8:00 AM to 1:30 PM, FX 7:20 AM to 1:00 PM.

A note on the equity index close. The equity index futures day session (RTH) runs 9:30 AM to 4:15 PM ET (8:30 AM to 3:15 PM CT), while the underlying S&P 500 cash index closes at 4:00 PM ET, which is also where the equity-index daily settlement price is struck. Either way, this does not affect the 5:00 PM ET daily reset.

Equity Index (ES, NQ, MES, RTY, YM). The day session opens with the US stock market at 9:30 AM ET and runs to 4:15 PM ET (the underlying S&P 500 cash index closes at 4:00 PM ET). RTH carries the large majority of daily equity-index volume. The overnight ETH session reflects Asian and European trading and is much thinner.

Metals (GC, MGC, HG). The Gold day session runs 8:20 AM to 1:30 PM ET (7:20 AM to 12:30 PM CT), with extra liquidity in the early US morning during the London overlap.

Energy (CL, MCL, NG). The Crude Oil day session runs 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM ET (8:00 AM to 1:30 PM CT).

FX (6E). The Euro FX day session runs 8:20 AM to 2:00 PM ET (7:20 AM to 1:00 PM CT). FX futures stay relatively active overnight during the European session, so ETH liquidity in 6E is better than, say, equity index overnight. FX futures never had a strong open-outcry pit, so this "day session" is a liquidity convention rather than a hard boundary. Note the 6E daily settlement price is struck at 3:00 PM ET (2:00 PM CT), an hour after this day-session window.

CME observes US market holidays with a mix of full closures and shortened sessions. The exact dates shift every year, so always confirm the current year's calendar on CME's official trading-hours page before you plan around a holiday.

Full closures (market closed all day): New Year's Day, Good Friday, and Christmas Day.

Early closes (shortened session): the major US holidays such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. On these days the market typically closes early.

Equity Index: halts around 1:15 PM ET (12:15 PM CT).

Energy and Metals: halt around 1:30 PM ET (12:30 PM CT).

Two practical points. Around a holiday, the normal Sunday or evening reopen can also be adjusted, so a holiday Monday may shift the prior Sunday open or the maintenance schedule. And on any shortened session, liquidity is poor while your daily reset still anchors to 5:00 PM ET even though live trading ended earlier.

Want the exact loss limits behind the 5:00 PM ET reset? Read Thunderbolt Classic futures and Vanguard futures.

Trading through the weekend? See how overnight and weekend holds work in Thunderbolt Legacy futures.

New to the platform? Start with DXtrade overview.

The market is open almost around the clock.

Now you know exactly when.