NEPSE Trading Hours: Pre-Open Session, Continuous Trading and Settlement
Updated · 4 min read
When the Nepal Stock Exchange opens and closes, how the 10:30 pre-open session sets the opening price, and what happens to your trade after the bell.
The Nepal Stock Exchange trades Sunday through Thursday in most published schedules, but the sessions that matter to a retail investor are the same every trading day: a pre-open session, then continuous trading, then a close that freezes prices until the next session.
The trading day at a glance
| Phase | Time (Nepal time) | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-open session | 10:30 – 10:45 | Orders within ±5% of the previous close; crossing orders execute |
| Break | 10:45 – 11:00 | Opening price per scrip is fixed |
| Continuous trading | 11:00 – 15:00 | Orders match as they arrive |
| Closed | after 15:00 | Last traded prices stand until the next session |
How the pre-open session actually works
The pre-open is not a blind auction that computes one clearing price for everybody. You place an ordinary buy or sell order, priced anywhere within 5% above or below the previous day's closing price — orders outside that band are rejected. If your order crosses an order already sitting on the other side, it executes right there in the window.
What you do not get is the order book. Market depth is hidden during the pre-open, so you cannot see what anyone else has bid or offered. You are pricing your order against yesterday's close and your own view, not against a visible queue.
The opening price for the 11:00 continuous session follows directly from that:
- If the scrip traded during the pre-open, its opening price is the last price it traded at in that window.
- If it did not trade at all, the opening price stays at the previous trading day's closing price.
So a scrip can already be several percent away from yesterday's close by 11:00 on a handful of pre-open trades. Most scrips see very little pre-open volume — a typical session prints only a few hundred units across a few dozen scrips — so a wide pre-open gap is a thin-volume print, not a verdict on the day.
The band has moved before. It was 2% until NEPSE's April 2026 regulation amendment widened it to 5%, alongside a wider 3% band on regular-session orders and a two-stage circuit breaker. Check the current circular before treating any number here as fixed.
Reading a quote outside trading hours
Once the market closes, the last traded price (LTP) stops moving. Any "live" price you see after 15:00 — here or anywhere else — is the closing price of the session that just ended. On the NEPSE live market page the session state is labelled explicitly, so you can tell a stale number from a moving one.
The same applies over the weekend and on public holidays. A price that has not changed for three days is usually a closed market, not a frozen stock.
After the trade: settlement
Matching is not the end of the transaction. Shares settle through your depository participant (DP) over the following days, and a flat DP charge applies per scrip per settlement. This is why the shares you bought this morning are not immediately available to sell, and why the cash from a sale is not immediately withdrawable.
What to check before you place an order
- Is the market actually open, or are you looking at a closing price?
- Did the scrip gap in the pre-open? Compare the open with the previous close on the company page.
- Who is on the other side? The floorsheet shows broker-wise activity for every trade of the day.
NepsezAI provides information and analysis only. Nothing here is registered investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.