Thursday, December 4, 2025 12:16 pm
Starting 8 December 2025, traders on Upstox can participate in the new NSE pre-open session for index and stock futures.
What does this mean?
Typically, markets open at 9:15 AM and close at 3:30 PM. Pre-open is a 15-minute window before the market opens, from 9:00 am to 9:15 am. During this period, traders can place, modify, or cancel orders, but trades don’t happen immediately.
Instead, the system collects all buy and sell orders and determines a single opening price (called the equilibrium price) based on demand and supply.
Until now, the pre-open window has existed only for Equities. But with NSE rolling this out for futures, you can now place pre-order futures trades too.
Which futures contracts are included?
- Current-month stock & index futures
- Next-month futures (only in the last 5 trading days before expiry)
Not included
- Options
- Far-month futures
- Spread contracts
- Futures of stocks undergoing a corporate action (merger, demerger, etc.) on that day
How is the opening price decided?
The system picks the price where the maximum buyers and sellers match.
If multiple prices qualify, the exchange selects:
- Price with the fewest unmatched orders
- If still tied, the price closest to yesterday’s closing price
- If no match happens in pre-open, the first trade in the normal session becomes the opening price.
Example:
If buyers and sellers both match for 500 NIFTY Futures contracts at ₹25,500, then ₹25,500 becomes the opening price.
What happens to unmatched orders?
- Any limit order that doesn’t get matched will simply move to the normal market.
- Market orders will be converted into limit orders at the opening price that was discovered.
- If no opening price is found, the market orders will move to the normal session using the previous day’s closing price.
Summary of what this means for traders
- From 08 Dec 2025, F&O traders will get a 15-minute pre-open window (9:00–9:15 AM) on NSE for index and stock futures
- This means you can place or modify orders before the main session, with a fair opening price determined by a call-auction, similar to equities today
- Helps in better price discovery, reducing opening volatility, and giving more transparency (especially useful for overnight global cues, gap-ups/downs, etc.).
For reference, you can check out the circular here
