Moscow Exchange extends trading session: from September 14, markets will be open one hour longer
The Moscow Exchange has decided to significantly expand its trading schedule, which will be a significant event for all participants in the Russian stock market. Starting September 14, 2026, the main trading session will begin an hour earlier — at 9:00 a.m. instead of the usual 10:00. This will increase the duration of the main session to 10 hours, opening new horizons for implementing trading strategies.
The innovation will affect key market segments: the stock, derivatives, and currency markets, as well as the precious metals market. The calculation and publication of the exchange's main indices will also begin at 9:00. Thus, the total time for concluding transactions will increase to 17 hours per day and 103 hours per week, which is an unprecedented figure for the domestic exchange infrastructure.
New regulations and their features
The morning session on the stock and derivatives markets will retain its previous framework — from 6:50 to 9:00, with the opening auction taking place in the first ten minutes. The main session will occupy the period from 9:00 to 19:00. For securities not admitted to morning trading, the opening auction will take place from 9:00 to 9:10. The evening session will remain unchanged — from 19:00 to 23:50. The weekend schedule also remains the same: transactions will be concluded from 9:50 to 19:00, with the opening auction in the first ten minutes.
On the currency market and the precious metals market, the main session will start at 8:50 and end at 19:00, with the opening auction taking place before 9:00. The money market will operate on a separate schedule: unsecured modes will be available from 10:00 to 19:00, and the evening session will last from 19:00 to 23:50. The most noticeable shift will affect directed repo transactions, deposits, and loans — their start will be moved from 9:30 to 8:30, that is, an hour earlier than the current time.
The logic of the decision and expectations
The expansion of the schedule is directly related to investor demands. Extending the main session will allow participants to diversify trading opportunities. This will give investors more flexibility to implement strategies and provide additional liquidity, primarily through institutional players, for whom executing large orders during the main session is critically important. In addition, clients from Siberia and the Far East will get an extra hour to trade at a convenient time for them.
The bet on institutional players looks logical: large managers usually focus on the main session, where the bulk of orders is concentrated. At the same time, retail remains extremely active — in July, private investors directed 142.9 billion rubles into securities, and their share in stock transactions reached 63.3%. The exchange is simultaneously developing its infrastructure: it recently entrusted the verification of software code to neural networks and is expanding its set of tools for betting on foreign assets, including fixings for 23 foreign securities and plans to issue related futures and options.
My view: an extra hour of trading is not just a mechanical expansion, but a signal of the market's growing maturity. For active traders, this is an opportunity to better respond to morning news and Asian sessions, which is especially important in conditions of global volatility. However, the key beneficiaries will be institutional participants, whose algorithmic strategies will benefit from the increased time window for executing large orders without slippage.