If you follow US markets from India, the first thing to settle is the clock. The NYSE and Nasdaq trade from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern Time, Monday to Friday. India Standard Time sits at UTC+5:30 all year, so the conversion depends on whether the United States is currently on daylight time or standard time.
The two sets of IST timings
While the US is on daylight time, which runs from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, Eastern Time is UTC-4. The regular session then runs from 7:00 PM IST to 1:30 AM IST.
While the US is on standard time, Eastern Time is UTC-5. The same session runs from 8:00 PM IST to 2:30 AM IST.
Because the session ends after midnight in India, it spans two calendar dates. Friday's US session finishes in the early hours of Saturday in India, and Monday's session begins on Monday evening. Nothing trades on Saturday or Sunday in the US, so there is no US session that starts on an Indian weekend.
Pre-market and after-hours in IST
US exchanges publish extended-hours windows around the regular session. On the venue side, pre-market activity starts from 4:00 AM Eastern Time and after-hours trading runs until 8:00 PM Eastern Time. In IST that is roughly:
- Pre-market: from 1:30 PM IST (US daylight time) or 2:30 PM IST (US standard time), up to the regular open.
- After-hours: from the regular close until 5:30 AM IST (US daylight time) or 6:30 AM IST (US standard time).
Access to these windows varies by broker, and many brokers offer narrower hours than the exchanges publish. Check your own broker for the exact times it accepts orders. The pre-market vs regular hours guide explains the differences in more detail.
Why the shift is easy to miss
India does not observe daylight saving, so nothing changes on the Indian side when the US moves its clocks. That makes the shift easy to overlook: the market opens an hour earlier in IST in March and an hour later in November, even though your own clock never moved.
There is a second complication. Europe changes its clocks on different weekends from the US. For a few weeks in spring and a week in autumn, the usual gap between London and New York is one hour shorter. If you also watch European markets, read the clock gap guide so the weeks around those dates do not catch you out.
Holidays and early closes
US exchanges close on their own public holidays, and a few days each year end early at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. For example, the day after Thanksgiving in 2026 closes at 1:00 PM Eastern, which is 11:30 PM IST. Indian holidays do not close US markets, and US holidays do not close Indian ones, so the two calendars rarely line up. The NYSE holiday calendar lists every closure and early close taken from the exchange.
A quick way to check
Rather than converting by hand, open the NYSE page or the Nasdaq page and set your timezone to Asia/Kolkata. The status, the countdown, and the schedule table all follow your zone, and they already account for US daylight saving and the published holiday calendar.
Market hours on this site are for reference only. Verify with the official exchange before trading.