MT5 broker holiday hours and what they do to your trade history
Shortened sessions, wider spreads and odd swap: where to find the real schedule and how to record those days.
Around Christmas, New Year, national holidays and sometimes at quarter ends, brokers change their trading schedules. Markets close early, some symbols do not trade at all, spreads widen and swap is charged in unusual ways. If you look at your MetaTrader 5 history afterwards you may find trades that look odd: positions that stayed open through a quiet stretch, a stop that was hit at a strange price, or a day with no activity. This page explains what changes on holidays, where to find the schedule for your own symbols, and how to record those days in a way that keeps your statistics honest.
What actually changes
- Trading sessions. Each symbol has its own sessions, and on a holiday they can be shortened, shifted or cancelled. A symbol that normally trades nearly around the clock may close for hours.
- Liquidity and spread. Even when the platform is open, fewer participants can mean wider spreads and bigger price jumps, which affects fills and stop losses.
- Swap. Rollover happens at a set time, and a holiday can move or change how many days of swap are charged; the rules for the triple charge are explained on triple swap on Wednesday.
- Server time. If your broker keeps a fixed offset or follows daylight saving, the clock around a holiday can look different; see daylight saving and your journal dates.
- Margin. Some brokers raise margin requirements ahead of closures; check the broker’s notice.
Where to find the real schedule
The authority on your trading hours is your broker. Most brokers publish a holiday notice or a trading hours page, and the terminal itself lists sessions in the symbol specification. In Market Watch you can right-click a symbol and open its specification, where the sessions are listed; details can vary between builds, so check yours. The page on symbol specification walks through the fields. Do not assume that the hours on a news site or a different broker apply to your account.
| Question | Where to check |
|---|---|
| Is my symbol open on that day? | Broker holiday notice and the symbol specification |
| Will swap change? | Broker notice and the swap fields in the specification |
| What time is the rollover on my server? | Broker documentation; compare with MT5 server time |
| Will margin rise before the closure? | Broker announcement |
What it looks like in your history
Holiday effects show up in the trade list as unusual open and close times, as positions held across a closure, and as swap amounts that do not match a normal weekday. A stop loss that was triggered in thin trading may close at a price worse than the stop; the mechanics are similar to those on weekend gaps and stop loss fills. If a trade is missing a time you expected, it may simply have been placed when the market reopened. Compare the entry time with the session table rather than assuming a data error.
Recording holiday days in a journal
The easiest fix for distorted statistics is a tag. Mark each trade placed on a holiday or in a thin-liquidity session, so that you can view your results with and without them. After a few months you can compare average spread cost, slippage you noticed and your own behaviour on those days. Behaviour is the more important part: many traders feel pressure to trade because the screen is quiet, or feel safe because the news calendar is empty. The page on how to journal holiday and thin-liquidity days offers a short review routine, and journalling after a break helps if you were away.
A worked example (hypothetical)
A trader reviews December. Of 36 closed positions, 7 were placed in the last four days of the year, when the broker’s notice listed shortened sessions. Those 7 trades have an average cost in spread and swap that is visibly higher than the rest, and three of the seven were opened without a written plan. By tagging the seven as holiday trades, the trader can see that the extra cost and the missing plans, not the setups, explain the weak week. The numbers are invented; the method is to tag first and judge second.
What the app does and does not do
AI Trading Journal is a Windows app for MetaTrader 5 only. It reads closed trades from the terminal on your PC, adds new ones every 5 minutes and keeps the journal as a file in your Documents folder; times follow the broker’s server clock. It lets you add tags and notes such as a holiday marker to each entry, then filter by them. It does not know your broker’s holiday calendar, does not record spreads or slippage, and is read-only. Notion is an optional extra copy.
Limits and cautions
- Holiday schedules are set by the broker and change each year; always read the current notice.
- A tag helps you review, but it does not make thin-market trades safer.
- Not advice, and the example numbers are hypothetical.
Frequently asked questions
Why are my MT5 trading hours different on holidays?
Where do I see a symbol’s sessions in MT5?
Does swap change on holidays?
Why did my stop fill at a worse price on a holiday?
Can I tag holiday trades in the journal app?
Related guides
- A local trading journal for MT5
- P&L calendar for MT5
- Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
- Trading progress and goals
- Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
- An offline trading journal for Windows
- How to set monthly trading goals
- Import your whole MT5 history
- How to tag trades
- Trade screenshots for your journal
- All trading journal comparisons
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