Hong Kong Exchanges extends trading hours

With effective from 7 March 2011, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) will extend its trading hours of securities and derivatives markets. The extension has been approved by the Securities and Futures Commission and will be implemented in two phases.

For the phase one, beginning on 7 March 2011, the morning trading hours of securities market will start at 9:30am and end at 12:00pm, i.e. starts and ends half-hour earlier than current trading session. In the afternoon, the stock market will start at 1:30pm till 4:00pm. The phase two will be effected starting from 5 March 2012, the morning session will be the same as phase one and the afternoon period will begin at 1:00pm while the end maintains at 4:00pm.

The Mainland exchanges’ current trading hours are 9:30am – 11:00am and 1:00pm - 3:00pm. The extension of trading hours will increase the overlap of HKEx’s trading hours with the Mainland exchanges. HKEx aims at improving the price discovery function for Hong Kong-listed mainland-related securities and strengthening its competitiveness by increasing the trading hours.

After phase two, HKEx’s trading hours will extend to 5.5 hours which is currently one hour less than one of its regional competitor, Singapore Exchanges. However, Singapore Exchanges will cancel its lunch break in March this year and its trading hours will further extended to 8 hours and it is the longest trading hours of stock exchanges in Asia.