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We allow trading including overnight and on weekends, when some underlier markets are closed or less liquid. For now, this may lead to lower liquidity conditions that could make the exchange less safe for users. To ensure safety, we impose some limits on positions, prices and open interest in the early days of the exchange.

Definitions

Market Close refers to periods when major reference markets (e.g., NYSE, CME) are closed.
Asset ClassWeekday Overnight HoursWeekend Hours
Single StocksNYSE closed (Mon–Fri ET)*Fri afternoon → Mon morning ET
US Equity IndicesCME closed (Sun–Fri ET)*Fri afternoon → Sun evening ET
CommoditiesCME closed (Sun–Fri ET)*Fri afternoon → Sun evening ET
FXN/A (open 24/5)Fri 22:00 → Sun 22:00 UTC
U.S. bank holidays are treated as normal business days for Market-Close logic.

Leverage Limits

Asset ClassMaximum Leverage
FX (Currency Pairs)50:1
Gold & Major Indices30:1
Commodities (excl. Gold)20:1
Individual Equities10:1
Example: 50× leverage requires a 2% Initial Margin.

Position Limits

Asset ClassMaximum Position (USD Notional)
FX (50× leverage)$50,000,000
Indices & Gold (30× leverage)$10,000,000
Commodities excl. Gold (20× leverage)$5,000,000
Individual Equities (10× leverage)$2,500,000
During Market Close:
  • Position size per participant is limited to the Max Position Percentage of normal size.
  • Participants exceeding this limit can only reduce exposure:
    • For long positions: only sell orders accepted.
    • For short positions: only buy orders accepted.
Trading PeriodMax Position % of Normal Limit
Overnight50%
Weekend10%

Price Bands

We implements price bands to protect users against:
  • their own fat finger errors;
  • manipulative practices from other market participants.
For all products, buy orders at a price greater than the upper band, and sell orders at a price less than the lower band, are rejected by the system before reaching the matching engine. The bands are set by taking a fixed percentage above and below the last known Market Data Price of the product, set every minute. The percentages are as follows:
  • US equities: 10%
  • US indices: 5%
  • Commodities: 5%
  • FX: 2%
Price bands may be relaxed at the sole discretion of QFEX for the following reasons:
  • Exceptional market volatility
  • Stock splits or reverse stock split of equities

Open Interest Limits

Once any product has around $1M USD worth of open interest, each user is capped to 10% of the open interest. QFEX currently maintains a $10M USD open interest limit per product.