Commodity Market Timings in India: MCX and NCDEX Hours by Contract

How the Indian Commodity Trading Day Is Structured

Commodity trading in India runs on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) for bullion, base metals and energy, and on the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) for agricultural contracts. Both are regulated by SEBI, which merged commodity regulation into the securities framework in 2015. The trading day is far longer than the equity day on NSE and BSE because metals and energy track global prices that move while London and New York are open, well into the Indian night.

The MCX session is split into a morning continuous session that begins at 9:00 AM and an evening session that keeps the same order book open without a break. There is also a short pre-open call auction from 8:45 AM to 9:00 AM, where orders are collected and a single equilibrium opening price is discovered. Knowing exactly when your specific contract closes matters, because placing a market order one minute after the close means it simply does not execute, and a position you wanted to square off intraday becomes an overnight carry with margin and gap risk.

The most common mistake retail traders make is assuming every MCX contract trades until 11:30 PM. That is true for gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas, but it is wrong for agricultural contracts. Trading the wrong assumption can leave you holding an illiquid agri position with no exit after 9:00 PM or 5:00 PM. The table below sets out the precise windows.

Precise Per-Commodity MCX Timing Table

These are the standard session windows on MCX. The bullion, metal and energy evening close moves from 11:30 PM to 11:55 PM only during US daylight saving time, which roughly runs from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, so that India stays aligned with the New York close that drives gold and crude prices.

Why the Old 11:55 PM and 9:00 PM Confusion Exists

A lot of online guides, and the earlier version of this page, simply said MCX trades 9:00 AM to 11:30 PM, extending to 11:55 PM in daylight saving, and stopped there. That is correct for bullion, base metals and energy, but it quietly ignores the agricultural contracts on MCX. SEBI distinguishes between internationally referenceable agri commodities, whose prices track a foreign benchmark such as the Bursa Malaysia palm oil contract, and non-referenceable agri commodities, which are purely domestic.

Internationally referenceable agri contracts such as crude palm oil are allowed an extended evening window to 9:00 PM so domestic prices can absorb overseas moves. Purely domestic agri contracts close at 5:00 PM, matching the traditional mandi and physical market hours. Lumping all of these into a single 11:30 PM figure, as many sites do, is the factual error this page now corrects.

• Bullion, energy and base metals: 9:00 AM to 11:30 PM, extending to 11:55 PM in US daylight saving time.
• Internationally referenceable agri such as crude palm oil and cotton: 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, no daylight saving change.
• Domestic non-referenceable agri such as mentha oil and guar: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, no daylight saving change.
• Pre-open call auction: 8:45 AM to 9:00 AM, for price discovery before continuous trading.

NCDEX and the Agricultural Window

NCDEX is the home of Indian agri derivatives, with contracts in guar seed, guar gum, castor seed, jeera, coriander, soybean and other crops. Its core agri session runs 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, aligning with the physical spot markets and the working day of the farming and trading community it serves. A handful of internationally referenceable contracts can run later, but the bulk of NCDEX activity ends in the late afternoon.

This is why an agri trader and a bullion trader effectively live on different clocks. If you trade guar on NCDEX, your decision window is the daytime, driven by monsoon forecasts, sowing data and government minimum support price news. If you trade gold or crude on MCX, your most volatile hours are often after 6:00 PM, when London is active and US data releases hit the wire. Matching your availability to the right product is a basic but underrated part of building a trading routine.

A Worked Example: Crude Oil on MCX in the Evening Session

Suppose it is a weekday evening in the US daylight saving period, so MCX crude oil trades until 11:55 PM. The MCX Crude Oil contract has a lot size of 100 barrels, and the price is quoted in rupees per barrel. Assume crude is trading at Rs 6,500 per barrel. A trader expects a bullish US inventory report at around 8:00 PM IST and buys one lot. The numbers below are illustrative and not a forecast.

• Buy 1 lot of MCX Crude Oil at Rs 6,500 per barrel, lot size 100 barrels, so the contract value is Rs 6,50,000.
• Margin required is typically around 10 to 12 percent of contract value, so roughly Rs 65,000 to Rs 78,000 is blocked, not the full Rs 6,50,000.
• After the inventory data, the price rises to Rs 6,560 and the trader sells before the 11:55 PM close.
• Gross profit is Rs 60 per barrel times 100 barrels, which is Rs 6,000.
• Costs to subtract: brokerage of about Rs 20 per side at a discount broker is Rs 40, plus CTT on the sell side, plus exchange and GST charges, roughly Rs 100 to Rs 150 in total here.
• Net profit is approximately Rs 6,000 minus around Rs 150, which is close to Rs 5,850.

Two points make this example specific to India. First, on non-agri commodity futures, the relevant transaction tax is Commodities Transaction Tax (CTT) at 0.01 percent on the sell side of the contract value, not the equity STT. On a Rs 6,56,000 sell value, CTT is about Rs 65. Second, the close itself is a hard constraint. If the trader had waited past 11:55 PM hoping for more, the order book would already be shut and the position would carry overnight, exposed to the gap when global crude moves while MCX is closed. Trading the session boundary is part of the strategy, not an afterthought.

How Commodity Profits Are Taxed in India

This is where commodity trading differs sharply from equity. Profit from commodity futures and options is treated as non-speculative business income and taxed at your applicable income tax slab rate. The concessional capital gains rates that apply to equities, namely STCG at 20 percent and LTCG at 12.5 percent above Rs 1.25 lakh, do not apply to commodity derivatives. So a trader in the 30 percent slab who nets Rs 5 lakh from MCX trades over the year pays tax broadly at slab on that Rs 5 lakh as business income.

Because it is business income, you can also deduct genuine trading expenses such as brokerage, exchange charges, internet, advisory subscriptions and depreciation on equipment, and you must account for it in your profit and loss statement. If turnover crosses the tax audit threshold, a chartered accountant audit may be required. The transaction-level tax during trading is CTT, charged at 0.01 percent on the sell side of non-agri futures, while most agricultural commodity contracts are exempt from CTT altogether.

Why Global Market Hours Drive the Evening Session

The reason MCX keeps the lights on until 11:30 PM or 11:55 PM is simple. Gold, silver and crude oil are global assets whose benchmark prices are set in London and New York. Comex gold futures and NYMEX crude trade actively through the US session, which overlaps the Indian evening. If MCX closed at 5:00 PM like an agri market, Indian traders would have no way to react to US inflation data, OPEC decisions or a Federal Reserve statement until the next morning, by which time the price would have already gapped.

The daylight saving adjustment exists for the same reason. When New York moves its clocks, the US trading day shifts by an hour relative to India, and MCX nudges its close to 11:55 PM to keep the overlap with the active US session. This is why bullion and energy traders watch the US economic calendar as closely as any Indian data point, and why the single most volatile MCX hours often fall between 6:00 PM and 11:30 PM IST.

• US Energy Information Administration crude inventory data, usually around 8:00 PM IST on Wednesday, moves natural gas and crude.
• US non-farm payrolls and CPI releases, typically 6:00 PM IST, swing gold and silver sharply.
• Federal Reserve policy statements, late Indian evening, can drive the largest single moves of the month in bullion.

Holidays, Muhurat Trading and Special Sessions

MCX and NCDEX publish an annual holiday list, and the commodity calendar does not always match the equity calendar exactly, especially on days that are bank holidays. Some holidays close only the morning session while keeping the evening session open, because the evening session tracks global markets that are still trading. Always check the exchange holiday circular before assuming a day is fully open or closed.

On Diwali, MCX conducts a special Muhurat trading session in the evening, a symbolic auspicious window of about an hour. It is a real, settleable session, not a demo, so any trade you place carries genuine profit, loss and tax consequences. Liquidity can be thinner than normal, so spreads may widen, and a market order can fill further from the screen price than you expect.

Common Timing Mistakes That Cost Real Money

Most timing errors are avoidable. The expensive ones come from not knowing your specific contract close, ignoring the daylight saving shift, and placing orders into the final minutes when liquidity thins and slippage widens. A position you intended to exit intraday becomes an overnight carry simply because you missed the close by a few minutes, and the overnight gap can be larger than your entire intended profit.

• Assuming all MCX contracts trade to 11:30 PM when agri contracts close at 9:00 PM or 5:00 PM.
• Forgetting the 11:55 PM versus 11:30 PM daylight saving switch on bullion and energy.
• Placing large market orders in the last few minutes, when thin liquidity causes slippage.
• Carrying an unhedged position past the close into the overnight global gap without enough margin.
• Not using a hard stop-loss, so a fast US-session move runs against an open evening position.

A disciplined fix is to log every trade with its exact entry and exit time, the session you traded, and whether the close affected your exit. Over a few weeks this reveals whether you are systematically losing money in the last 30 minutes, or holding agri positions you cannot exit after 5:00 PM. A trading journal turns these timing patterns into something you can actually correct.

Sources and Further Reading

For authoritative, current data, always confirm session timings and transaction taxes on the official sources before you trade, because SEBI and the exchanges revise these from time to time. Refer to MCX (Multi Commodity Exchange), NCDEX and SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India).

Sources and Further Reading

For authoritative data and further reading on this topic, refer to MCX (Multi Commodity Exchange), SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) and NSE India. Always confirm current rules, rates and contract specifications on the official source before you trade.