Key takeaways
- The first two hours after the cash open carry 20.6% of the Nasdaq's daily movement. The 09:00-10:00 and 10:00-11:00 ET hours average 75.36 and 75.69 points — about 3.6x the quietest hour of the day.
- The 7-hour cash session is under a third of the clock but 54.9% of the movement, and it contains 54.0% of all daily highs and lows.
- The closing hour sets the day's high more often than any other. 15:00-16:00 ET produces the session high 13.06% of the time — beating even the opening hour.
- The method finds each index's own open, which is how you know it works. GER40's busiest hour is 03:00-04:00 ET — that is 09:00 in Frankfurt — while all three US indices peak at the New York open.
- Overnight is not dead, it is just thin. The quietest Nasdaq hour still averages 21.32 points, so overnight stops are hit by real moves, not by noise alone.
first two hours
hour average
cash session
measured
Every hour on this page is a US Eastern hour, and that is the whole point. The Nasdaq's cash open is 09:30 ET all year round, but in UTC that is 13:30 in summer and 14:30 in winter. Bucket the data by UTC hour — as most published "best time to trade" tables do — and you smear the single most important hour of the day across two, halving it in both.
This study measures 3,378 trading sessions of US100 (Nasdaq 100) from 2013-05-22 to 2026-09-08, using the same bid-side hourly archive the FxBacktest simulator replays, with every bar converted to US Eastern time first. You can replay any of these sessions bar by bar to see the pattern on a chart.
The Nasdaq hour by hour
| Hour (ET) | Session | Mean range points | Share of the day's movement | Sets the day's high | Sets the day's low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00-01:00 | Overnight / Asia | 21.36 | 1.66% | 3.35% | 5.39% |
| 01:00-02:00 | Overnight / Asia | 25.98 | 2.05% | 1.89% | 2.96% |
| 02:00-03:00 | Overnight / Asia | 25.95 | 3.34% | 3.82% | 4.77% |
| 03:00-04:00 | Overnight / Asia | 34.9 | 4.85% | 5.74% | 6.96% |
| 04:00-05:00 | Pre-market / Europe | 32.0 | 4.23% | 2.69% | 3.02% |
| 05:00-06:00 | Pre-market / Europe | 26.44 | 3.63% | 2.34% | 2.87% |
| 06:00-07:00 | Pre-market / Europe | 26.58 | 3.57% | 1.63% | 2.07% |
| 07:00-08:00 | Pre-market / Europe | 30.44 | 3.93% | 2.13% | 2.1% |
| 08:00-09:00 | Pre-market / Europe | 42.01 | 5.33% | 4.0% | 3.79% |
| 09:00-10:00 | US cash session | 75.36 | 10.37% | 11.01% | 10.83% |
| 10:00-11:00 | US cash session | 75.69 | 10.21% | 9.21% | 11.66% |
| 11:00-12:00 | US cash session | 58.47 | 7.9% | 6.13% | 6.93% |
| 12:00-13:00 | US cash session | 49.17 | 6.54% | 4.56% | 4.71% |
| 13:00-14:00 | US cash session | 48.04 | 6.19% | 4.23% | 4.88% |
| 14:00-15:00 | US cash session | 49.84 | 6.52% | 5.65% | 5.95% |
| 15:00-16:00 | US cash session | 55.99 | 7.16% | 13.06% | 9.21% |
| 16:00-17:00 | After hours | 23.44 | 2.43% | 3.88% | 2.43% |
| 17:00-18:00 break | After hours | 2.0 | 0.11% | 0.3% | 0.15% |
| 18:00-19:00 | After hours | 28.38 | 1.72% | 2.13% | 1.45% |
| 19:00-20:00 | After hours | 25.9 | 1.56% | 1.45% | 0.92% |
| 20:00-21:00 | Overnight / Asia | 33.58 | 2.02% | 2.13% | 1.81% |
| 21:00-22:00 | Overnight / Asia | 29.86 | 1.85% | 2.66% | 1.81% |
| 22:00-23:00 | Overnight / Asia | 25.07 | 1.53% | 2.66% | 1.54% |
| 23:00-00:00 | Overnight / Asia | 21.32 | 1.29% | 3.35% | 1.81% |
Two things jump out. The first is the twin peak at the open: 09:00-10:00 and 10:00-11:00 ET average 75.36 and 75.69 points against 21.32 in the quietest hour, and between them they carry 20.6% of everything the index does in a day. The second is the shape of the rest of the session — volatility sags through lunch, bottoming around 12:00-13:00 and 13:00-14:00 ET, then climbs again into the close.
The 15:00-16:00 ET row is the one most traders underrate. It is not the widest hour, but it sets the day's high 13.06% of the time — more often than the opening hour does. If you are testing a breakout strategy, that is where a large share of the day's extremes are actually made.
Does the method survive a control?
A time-of-day study is easy to get wrong and hard to check. The control here is the DAX: if the method is really finding cash-market activity rather than an artefact of the clock, GER40 should peak at the Frankfurt open, not the New York one.
| Index | Busiest hour (ET) | Mean range | Quietest hour | Mean range | Busiest / quietest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US500 (S&P 500) | 10:00-11:00 | 17.05 | 00:00-01:00 | 4.87 | 3.5x |
| US100 (Nasdaq 100) | 10:00-11:00 | 75.69 | 23:00-00:00 | 21.32 | 3.6x |
| US30 (Dow 30) | 09:00-10:00 | 137.69 | 00:00-01:00 | 34.84 | 4.0x |
| GER40 (DAX) | 03:00-04:00 | 80.61 | 16:00-17:00 | 21.77 | 3.7x |
It does. GER40's busiest hour is 03:00-04:00 ET — 09:00 in Frankfurt — while US500, US100 and US30 all peak at the New York open. Nothing in the code knows which exchange an instrument belongs to, so the fact that each index's peak lands on its own cash open is evidence the measurement is picking up real session structure.
Note also how similar the ratios are. Every index moves 3.5-4.0x as much in its busiest hour as its quietest. That is a far smaller spread than the 20x-plus figures you get if you leave the session break in the sample — the break hour is not a quiet hour, it is a closed market, and mixing the two is the most common error in this kind of table.
How concentrated is the cash session?
| Index | Share of the day's movement | Share of daily highs and lows |
|---|---|---|
| US500 (S&P 500) | 52.8% | 52.0% |
| US100 (Nasdaq 100) | 54.9% | 54.0% |
| US30 (Dow 30) | 53.7% | 53.6% |
| GER40 (DAX) | 37.6% | 30.4% |
For the three US indices the answer is consistent: roughly 54% of the day's movement and a similar share of its highs and lows, packed into about 30% of the available trading hours. GER40 is the outlier at 37.6%, and correctly so — its own cash session sits outside those hours entirely.
| Block | Hours (ET) | Hours counted | Mean hourly range points | Share of the day's movement | Share of daily extremes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overnight / Asia | 20:00-04:00 ET | 8 | 27.3 | 18.6% | 26.3% |
| Pre-market / Europe | 04:00-09:00 ET | 5 | 31.5 | 20.7% | 13.3% |
| US cash session | 09:00-16:00 ET | 7 | 58.9 | 54.9% | 54.0% |
| After hours | 16:00-20:00 ET | 3 | 25.9 | 5.7% | 6.1% |
What this means for backtesting
- A session filter changes your sample more than your strategy does. Restricting entries to the cash session removes about 45% of the index's movement from the test. That is a legitimate choice, but it must be made before you look at the results, not after.
- Do not compare an overnight backtest to a cash-session one. The hours are not equivalent: an overnight hour on the Nasdaq averages roughly a third of the range of an opening hour, so identical point-based stops and targets mean completely different things in each.
- Size by the hour you actually trade. A fixed point stop that is sensible at 03:00-04:00 ET is inside the noise at 09:00-10:00 ET. Use ATR or a session-aware stop rather than one number for the whole day.
- Check your sample covers both. If your backtest sample is drawn entirely from the open, you have tested the loudest hour of the day and learned nothing about the other 16.
The practical walkthrough — which timeframe to use, how the CFD session differs from the cash index, and how to size in points rather than pips — is in how to backtest the Nasdaq (US100). For what happens across the break between these sessions, see index overnight gaps.
Methodology
- Source: Dukascopy bid OHLC hourly bars as held in the FxBacktest archive and replayed by the simulator.
- Sample: 3,378 US100 sessions (2013-05-22 to 2026-09-08), plus 3,373 US500, 3,384 US30 and 3,312 GER40 sessions for comparison.
- Time zone: every bar is converted from UTC to US Eastern using the statutory DST rule — EDT from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, EST otherwise — so 09:30 ET is the same bar all year. The cash open falls inside the 09:00-10:00 ET bar.
- Trading day: bars are grouped into ET calendar days. Days carrying fewer than 12 hourly bars (holidays, half sessions and archive edges) are dropped.
- Share of the day's movement: hourly ranges overlap and therefore do not sum to the day's high-low. Each hour is divided by the sum of that day's hourly ranges, which does add to 100%, rather than by the day's own high-low.
- The session break: the 17:00-18:00 ET hour is the daily close, present in only 10.2% of sessions. It is shown in the table for completeness but excluded from the busiest, quietest and session-block figures — a closed market is not a quiet hour.
- Bid-side caveat: ranges are measured on bid prices. Spreads widen around the open and the break, so the very first and last hours of a session carry slightly more spread-driven range than a mid-price feed would show.
Download this dataset
Every figure on this page as raw CSV and JSON, regenerated whenever the archive updates. Free for any use, including commercial, with attribution to FxBacktest.
- us100-nasdaq-100-every-hour-of.csvUS100 (Nasdaq 100): every hour of the trading day, US Eastern time
- where-each-indexs-busiest-hour-falls.csvWhere each index's busiest hour falls
- how-much-of-the-day-the.csvHow much of the day the US cash session accounts for
- us100-by-session-block.csvUS100 by session block
- nasdaq-volatility-by-hour.jsonAll tables plus metadata, one file
Cite or republish this data
This research is free to quote, screenshot, or republish — in an article, a video, a newsletter, or a course — as long as you credit FxBacktest with a link back to this page. Copy the attribution below.
Frequently asked
What is the most volatile hour to trade the Nasdaq?
The 10:00-11:00 US Eastern hour, averaging 75.69 points on US100 — closely followed by the opening hour, 09:00-10:00 ET. Together those two hours carry 20.6% of everything the index does in a day, roughly 3.6 times the quietest hour.
How much of the Nasdaq's daily move happens in the US cash session?
54.9% of it, inside 7 hours that make up about 30% of the instrument's trading day. That same window contains 54.0% of all daily highs and lows.
When does the Nasdaq's daily high or low usually form?
Most often in the closing hour: 15:00-16:00 ET sets the session high 13.06% of the time, more than any other hour including the open. The opening hour 09:00-10:00 ET is the most likely place for the day's low at 10.83%.
Why are these hours given in Eastern time rather than UTC?
Because the cash open is fixed at 09:30 ET but moves between 13:30 and 14:30 UTC with daylight saving. Bucketing by UTC hour splits the most active hour of the day across two buckets and understates both, which is why UTC-based 'best hour to trade' tables tend to look flatter than reality.
Is the overnight session worth backtesting?
It is thinner, not empty — the quietest Nasdaq hour still averages 21.32 points. Roughly 45% of the index's daily movement happens outside the cash session, so an overnight strategy has real material to work with, but point-based stops and targets must be rescaled for it.