Here you can find the information you need to get set up with pre-market and after-market access on your brokerage and trading platform.
TradeStation offers pre-market trading for an hour and a half, from 8:00 am until 9:30 am, EST. The broker’s after-hours session lasts four hours, from 4:00 pm until 8:00 pm, EST. There is no surcharge to place a trade during these times. The broker charges only its regular commission for extended-hours trades. Equity accounts are automatically enrolled for extended-hours trading, so there are no forms to fill out. You can access extended-hours by selecting GTC+ in the duration selection area on the TradeStation platform. Below are examples of the GTC+ selection on their desktop and mobile applications.
OUR EXTENDED HOUR SESSION IS AN HOUR BEFORE THE OPEN AND AN HOUR AFTER THE CLOSE
Pre-Market Trading Session: 7:30 am to 8:30 am Central Time.
After Hours Trading Session: 3:00 pm to *4:00 pm Central Time.
*These hours also pertain to orders by phone, e-mail, or chat to our trade desk.
Extended hours trades entered during the pre-market or normal trading session (8:30 am to 3:00 pm) will continue to work and expire at 4:00 pm the day it was entered. Also, please be aware that stop orders do not carry over into extended hours.
Lastly, you may experience the following, but not limited to, when trading during extended hours:
*Please Note: Options do not trade during extended hours, except for a handful of ETF options that trade until 3:15 pm, or 15-minutes after the close of the market.
Interactive Brokers customers can place orders any time of the day or night on the company’s desktop platform. Orders can be specified to fill only during the regular session, which is the default setup.
Traders who want orders to fill in the pre-market session can select “Allow pre-open” on the order ticket. This option is in the drop-down menu for duration. Another choice is “Fill outside RTH,” which will allow an order to be filled outside of regular trading hours. This second option permits orders to be filled in either the morning or evening session.
The exact hours a specific instrument can be traded is shown on the order ticket. Just click on “advanced +,” and the software will generate a drop-down menu. Here, click on “Check Margin” and you’ll get another window with information on margin requirements and extended-hours sessions that are available for the ticker symbol entered.
The broker’s browser-based portal is another place where extended-hours trades can be submitted. During our exploration, we found the software to be a little easier to use than the desktop system.
To submit an extended-hours trade on the web portal, first you need to go to a stock’s or ETF’s profile page. You can do this in one of several ways. The first is to run a scan using the broker’s security screener. It can be accessed by clicking on the icon with three horizontal lines in the upper-left corner. Another method is to click on a security’s name in the platform’s watchlist. And a final method is to enter a ticker symbol in the search field.
Once you’re on the profile page, there’s a trade button in the upper-right portion of the screen. Click on this and you’ll have the software’s trade ticket. On the trade ticket, there’s a switch to turn on extended-hours trading. It will say “Outside RTH.” Turn this on and the order will fill in either the regular market session or during extended hours.
Additional information and source content for this information is found at https://www.brokerage-review.com and https://support.tastyworks.com/support/solutions/articles/43000435382-pre-market-and-after-hours-orders-extended-hours-
