Does Silver Have Trading Hours?

Does Silver Have Trading Hours?

Reading time: 5 minutes

Although silver often plays second fiddle to gold, silver is versatile and remains widely popular, a precious metal that maintains a unique position in history and industry.

Aside from silver being used for its electrical conductivity and in jewellery, the silver market has also long been recognised as a prominent investment asset. For any traders or investors trading the precious metal or considering adding it to their watchlist or portfolio, being aware of the hours that it can be traded is important. 

Silver’s Trading Hours

Spot Silver CFDs with FP Markets:

Traded against the US dollar (USD), the Australian dollar (AUD), the euro (EUR) and the Singaporean dollar (SGD), spot silver (XAG) CFDs are widely traded products with FP Markets. The spot price for many brokers is derived from the ‘front month’ futures contract—a futures contract with an expiration date closest to the current date. Contracts for Differences (CFDs) offer traders and investors the option of trading/investing in the commodities space without considering the physical delivery of the underlying asset and trade void of an expiration date, hence named spot market instruments. Importantly, irrespective of whether you trade Forex (currencies), individual stocks, bonds, ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds) or commodities, all CFDs are cash-settled leveraged derivative products. Put simply, you can never take physical delivery of the underlying asset when trading CFDs.

With FP Markets, you can access silver CFDs nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week. However, as demonstrated through the XAG/USD specification tab (below) out of MetaTrader 4 (MT4), active trading opens at 01:00 am on Monday and closes at 24:00 (midnight) until Thursday (note that Friday is 23:58 rather than 24:00). Of relevance, at FP Markets, you can trade silver on MT4, Metatrader 5 (MT5) and cTrader.

Futures and Options Market:

Unlike CFDs, which, as we already know, are cash-settled trading instruments, futures are designed to allow the trader or investor to trade based on the future price of silver at a specified date. Another key difference between futures and CFDs is the settlement method. Futures can be settled physically (taking ownership of the physical metal at expiration) or cash settled. Many futures contracts are used for hedging purposes to form a price guarantee as well as for speculation.

Interestingly, however, unlike the futures market, which obligates both the long and short parties to commit to buy and sell, an options contract does not commit the option holder to any such pledge. An option provides the holder the right but not the obligation to buy or sell silver. The option seller (or writer), nevertheless, does commit to buy or sell the underlying asset (or, of course, settle in cash). 

According to the CME Group (below), trading hours for both futures and options on CME Globex run from 6:00 pm until 5:00 pm (New York time) and have an hour break in between. You will note that the trading hours are similar to CFDs, and that is because CFD pricing is derived largely from underlying futures contracts.

Start Trading Commodities with FP Markets Today

From precious metals, such as gold and silver, to a generous offering of various hard and soft commodities, traders and investors can also access and trade a wide selection of financial instruments with FP Markets. 

Consider opening a demo account with us today—it takes less than a few minutes—and begin exploring the financial markets using world-class trading platforms, such as MetaTrader and cTrader.