Close before 4:45 PM Eastern Time
Eval and simulated-funded accounts must be flat by 4:45 PM Eastern Time (ET), Monday through Friday. Positions are automatically closed at the cutoff; that scheduled close is not itself a breach.
Do not carry positions through the daily close or over the weekend. Live accounts follow their separate live trading schedule.
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Regular Monday–Thursday session | Be flat by 4:45 PM ET. Re-enter only from 6:00 PM ET when the contract is open. |
| Friday close | Stay flat over the weekend and wait for the next open exchange session. Do not treat Friday at 6:00 PM ET as a reopening. |
| Exchange holiday or early close | Use the earlier applicable exchange close. Do not wait until 4:45 PM ET if the contract stops trading sooner. |
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Convert Eastern Time to UTC
Use a date-aware New York time-zone setting such as America/New_York. Eastern Time is EDT (UTC−4) during U.S. daylight saving time and EST (UTC−5) during standard time.
In 2026, U.S. daylight saving time runs from March 8 to November 1. The Boxcar cutoff remains 4:45 PM ET when clocks change; its UTC equivalent changes by one hour.
| New York time in effect | 4:45 PM ET cutoff | 6:00 PM ET reopening |
|---|---|---|
| EDT — UTC−4 | 20:45 UTC | 22:00 UTC |
| EST — UTC−5 | 21:45 UTC | 23:00 UTC |
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UK example: the October clock-change gap
The UK moves its clocks back on October 25, 2026; New York changes on November 1. During the intervening week, the Boxcar cutoff arrives one hour earlier on a London clock. These ordinary-weekday examples assume no holiday or product-specific early close.
| Date | Boxcar cutoff in London | Normal reopening in London |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, October 20 | 21:45 BST | 23:00 BST |
| Tuesday, October 27 | 20:45 GMT | 22:00 GMT |
| Tuesday, November 3 | 21:45 GMT | 23:00 GMT |
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Check the contract’s holiday schedule
On CME Group’s trading-hours page, select the date and the relevant Globex product. Hours are listed in U.S. Central Time unless the schedule says otherwise. New York is one hour ahead of Chicago; for example, a hypothetical 12:00 PM CT early close would be 1:00 PM ET, earlier than Boxcar’s normal cutoff.
Use the actual trading close and the next open session for that contract. A pre-open phase can accept orders without matching trades, so an order-entry window is not the same as an open trading session. Recheck the exchange schedule before trading around a holiday; times can change.
Rules to check before trading
- Stay within your account’s Maximum Loss Limit, Daily Loss Limit (when present) and position-size allowance.
- BoxcarPayout simulated-funded accounts must be flat one minute before through one minute after high-impact USD news.
- Automation, trade copying and scaling into positions are allowed, but do not exempt a trade from any rule.
- Holding long and short positions in the same exact contract is prohibited. Across accounts, opposing positions in the same or correlated products are prohibited.
- Within one Eval or sim-funded account, opposing mini/micro pairs and opposing positions in different products are allowed. These exceptions do not carry over to live accounts.
- High-frequency trading and prohibited microscalping are not allowed.