Commodity Market Time in India: MCX Timings, Sessions and Global Hours

MCX is the only major Indian exchange whose closing bell moves because of a clock change in Washington.

Twice a year the exchange issues a circular and shifts the end of its evening session by 25 minutes. Not because anything changed in Mumbai, but because the American clocks did, and because the gold and crude contracts traded on MCX settle against prices formed in New York.

That one fact explains most of what confuses people about commodity market time in India.

Commodity market time in India: the short answer

The commodity market in India opens at 9:00 AM IST and runs Monday to Friday. The closing time depends on what you trade.

The 11:30 PM close applies while the United States is on daylight saving time. From early November to mid-March, non-agri commodities on MCX trade until 11:55 PM IST instead.

Right now, in September 2026, the close is 11:30 PM. US clocks go back on 1 November 2026, and MCX normally applies the revised timing from the Monday that follows.

MCX trading hours, segment by segment

MCX revised its hours with effect from 9 March 2026, the Monday after US daylight saving began. The circular set non-agri commodities at 9:00 AM to 11:30 PM, cotton and kapas at 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, and every other agri contract at 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Note the shape of the day. There is no lunch break and no session gap. The market runs in one continuous stretch, and what traders call the “evening session” is a habit of speech rather than a separate window: at 5:00 PM the domestic agri contracts stop, the bullion and energy contracts keep going, and the character of the order flow changes because Europe and then America arrive.

Two practical details the timing tables usually leave out.

Intraday products get closed for you. If you hold an MIS or equivalent intraday position, your broker squares it off before the exchange closes, typically 10 to 15 minutes early. Zerodha’s notice for the March 2026 revision put its own cut-off at 10 minutes. Your position ends at 11:20 PM, not 11:30 PM, and the difference has cost people money.

MCX has no pre-open session. Several widely-read Indian guides list one at 8:45 AM. There isn’t one. Orders go live at 9:00 AM against whatever the international market did overnight, which is exactly why the first few minutes gap so often. NCDEX does have a pre-open, 9:45 AM to 10:00 AM, and that difference between the two exchanges is worth knowing before you place a 9:00 AM order on the wrong one.

Why the closing time moves twice a year

India does not observe daylight saving. IST has been fixed at UTC+5:30 since 1947. The United States moves its clocks on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November.

MCX’s non-agri contracts reference COMEX and NYMEX settlement prices. When New York shifts by an hour, the window where Indian and American liquidity overlap shifts with it, and the exchange adjusts its close to keep that overlap intact.

The practical version: mark the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November in your calendar, and check the MCX circular in the week before each. The change is 25 minutes, which sounds trivial until a position you expected to manage until 11:55 PM stops at 11:30 PM.

Gold trading time in India

MCX gold and silver follow the non-agri schedule: 9:00 AM to 11:30 PM IST, extending to 11:55 PM in the November-to-March period.

But “gold market open time in India” means three different things depending on which price you are looking at, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in this whole topic.

MCX gold futures trade 9:00 AM to 11:30 PM. This is a derivative contract with a defined purity and lot size, quoted without retail taxes.

The IBJA rate is the physical wholesale bullion rate, published by the India Bullion and Jewellers Association on business days. It is not a live tick.

The jeweller’s price is the IBJA rate plus GST plus making charges, and the shop opens when the shop opens.

Three numbers, three different things. A reader who compares the MCX quote to the board in a jewellery shop concludes that someone is lying. Nobody is.

International spot gold, the XAU/USD that shows up in “XAUUSD trading time India” searches, runs on a fourth clock again: roughly Monday 3:30 AM IST to Saturday 2:30 AM IST, with a one-hour daily break at 2:30 AM IST. In the November-to-March period both shift an hour later.

The two moments that concentrate gold volume are the London bullion auctions at 3:00 PM and 7:30 PM IST (4:00 PM and 8:30 PM in winter), and the US data window at 6:00 PM IST. If you trade gold on a 15-minute chart, those are the candles that matter.

Crude oil trading time in India

MCX crude oil trades 9:00 AM to 11:30 PM IST, and 9:00 AM to 11:55 PM from November to March. Same hours for natural gas.

The hours matter less than one recurring appointment inside them.

The EIA publishes its Weekly Petroleum Status Report every Wednesday at 10:30 AM Eastern, which is 8:00 PM IST during US daylight saving and 9:00 PM IST in winter. Crude inventories land in that minute. MCX crude routinely moves more in the thirty seconds after 8:00 PM on a Wednesday than in the preceding six hours.

Natural gas has its own version: the EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report, Thursdays at the same hour, so 8:00 PM IST.

If you hold crude or natural gas positions through those releases, size them for a gap, not for the average range. Stops sitting 20 points away get filled well past 20 points away.

Agri commodities: MCX and NCDEX

Domestic agri contracts on MCX close at 5:00 PM. Cotton, cotton oil cake and kapas run to 9:00 PM because they track international cotton prices.

NCDEX, which is where most of India’s agricultural derivatives volume sits, trades 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM with a pre-open from 9:45 AM.

The shorter day is deliberate. A guar or chana contract responds to mandi arrivals, monsoon data and government procurement decisions, all of which happen during Indian business hours. There is no New York session to stay open for.

Is the commodity market open today?

Saturday and Sunday: closed. Both exchanges trade Monday to Friday. The occasional special session is announced in advance and is not a weekend rule.

Holidays are where it gets specific to commodities, and where most guides stop short.

MCX runs two sessions in a day, and a holiday can close one of them without closing the other. On a full holiday, both are shut. On a partial holiday, the morning session is closed and the evening session opens at 5:00 PM as usual.

In 2026, full closures include Republic Day on 26 January, Good Friday on 3 April, Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October and Christmas on 25 December. Partial days, morning closed and evening open, include Holi on 3 March, Ram Navami on 26 March, Ganesh Chaturthi on 14 September, Dussehra on 20 October and Diwali Balipratipada on 10 November.

So the answer to “why is MCX closed today” is often that it isn’t. It reopens at 5:00 PM.

Muhurat trading for Samvat 2083 falls on Sunday, 8 November 2026. The session timing is notified separately each year, so check the circular rather than assuming last year’s window.

Always confirm against the exchange’s own holiday calendar before you plan around a date. Broker pages lag, and the split-session detail is the part they get wrong.

Global commodity market hours in IST

Indian commodity prices are not set in India. MCX gold takes its cue from COMEX, MCX crude from NYMEX, and the base metals from the LME. Knowing when those venues are awake explains most of what your MCX chart does after 5:00 PM.

Two things fall out of that table.

The European market opening time in India is 12:30 PM IST from late March to late October, and 1:30 PM IST for the rest of the year. That is when the London metals complex wakes up properly and when MCX base metals start finding direction.

The heaviest MCX hours are 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM, because that block contains the US data release, the American open and the EIA reports. Morning trade on MCX is mostly a repricing of what happened in New York the night before. It is thinner, and the spreads show it.

Traders who want the same overlap logic for currencies will find it in forex session times in India, which maps the same clocks to FX pairs.

Best time to trade commodities in India

There is no single best hour, but the hours are not equal either.

6:00 PM to 11:00 PM IST. Highest volume, tightest spreads, most news. Gold, silver, crude and natural gas are all liquid here. If you can only trade one window, this is the one.

9:00 AM to 10:00 AM IST. The opening gap. MCX prices in everything that happened on Globex overnight. Good for traders who read overnight levels well, punishing for everyone else. Spreads are wide in the first few minutes.

10:00 AM to 5:00 PM IST. The agri window, and the quiet stretch for metals and energy. Ranges are narrow. Fine for position management, poor for breakout strategies.

Two dates to avoid unless you specifically want the volatility: the Wednesday 8:00 PM crude inventory print and the Thursday 8:00 PM gas storage number. Both produce moves with no regard for your stop placement.

Commodity CFDs and the 24/5 alternative

MCX closes. The international commodity market does not, at least not for long.

Commodity CFDs offered by international brokers track the same underlying prices as COMEX and NYMEX, and they trade on the global clock rather than the Indian one: roughly 3:30 AM Monday to 2:30 AM Saturday IST, with a short daily break. That removes the 11:30 PM to 9:00 AM blind spot where MCX is shut while New York is still trading and the overnight move is forming.

The trade-off is real and worth stating plainly. MCX contracts are SEBI-regulated, rupee-denominated and settled domestically. CFDs from an offshore broker are none of those things, and Indian residents should understand where their broker is regulated and what that means for them before funding anything. The instrument is not the question; the regulatory framework is.

Commodity price charts are free to watch either way, and comparing an international chart to your MCX chart across the 11:30 PM gap is the fastest way to see what the domestic session misses. If you are new to the asset class, start with how commodity trading works and which commodities carry the most volume before optimising your hours.

Trading involves risk. This article is educational and is not investment advice. Confirm exchange timings against the official MCX and NCDEX circulars before trading.