What time does the Paris stock exchange open and close?

What are the standard opening and closing hours of the Paris Bourse?

Let's first look at the general rules governing the opening and closing of the Paris Stock Exchange. Under normal circumstances, it is necessary to know that the Paris Stock Exchange has a so-called pre-opening phase, which takes place every day from 7.15am to 9am. During this phase, no transactions are actually made. However, buy or sell orders placed during the period when the market is closed are stored there along with orders that could not be executed during the previous session. During this pre-opening phase, the market can calculate the opening price of the various stocks. This price is made public at 9 a.m., when the session actually opens.

The session then takes place during fixed hours, from 9am to 5.30pm. During this period, buy and sell orders can be placed and result in transactions each time an opposite order at the same price is issued. During this phase you can place your orders which will be taken into account during the session.

Following this session, we come to the pre-closing phase, which runs from 5.30 pm to 5.35 pm (five minutes). During this time, no transactions are possible, but orders are of course likely to accumulate and will thus help determine the closing price of a security.

We have just seen the rules applicable to the opening and closing hours of the Paris Stock Exchange in the context of continuous quotation, which means that the price of the asset is modified each time an order is placed. However, there is also another form of quotation, called fixing, which is limited to securities that are least traded on the market. In this case, buy and sell orders are compared only twice a day, at 11.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m., in order to change the price of the asset.

Special cases and days when the Paris stock exchange is closed:

In addition to the opening and closing times of the Paris Stock Exchange, before trading on this financial centre, you should also be aware of the days on which the sessions take place and the days on which the exchange is closed.

Indeed, in general, the opening and closing rules of the Paris stock market are quite simple since this stock market is open from Monday to Friday and closed during the weekend. But there are also some exceptions to this rule and some days of closure outside Saturday and Sunday.

These are, of course, certain public holidays such as Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day, 25 December or Christmas Day and 26 December, Boxing Day.

It is also important to understand the mechanisms for suspending and resuming trading that can occur within a session. Indeed, it is possible that due to certain important announcements and news, the price of an asset undergoes a significant variation or, undergoes a suspension of the quotation of a value. This suspension is, of course, temporary and, more often than not, the quotation resumes only a few minutes after the interruption. Among the frequent causes of such suspensions are rumours about a company or a takeover bid that leads to a particularly sharp change in the price of an asset.  In such cases, NYSE Euronext, which is responsible for managing the listing, may decide that the stock should cease trading and that buy and sell orders should be suspended until further notice. While this situation usually lasts only a few minutes, in exceptional cases it may last longer, sometimes even several months. Generally speaking, this type of suspension is observed when the stock gains or loses 10% compared to the previous day's closing price. With this pause, investors are therefore able to confirm or deny their position. It should be noted that in certain cases, a company may itself request the suspension of the listing of its stock. The AMF or Autorité des Marchés Financiers also has this power.

When NYSE Euronext decides to suspend the listing of an asset, it does not do so without justification and without a strict framework. In such cases, it must specify the date on which and the conditions under which the listing will resume. When resuming trading after such a suspension, you should be cautious, especially if you have an order placed on the security before it was suspended. Indeed, in most cases, this type of suspension can lead to the elimination of orders that have not been executed on this security. It is therefore strongly recommended that you check the status of your order to see whether it has been deleted or not, in order to avoid committing the same operation twice.

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