Global day

The global day is a modern capital markets term used in international trading situations. Trading during a global day "follows the sun", from region to region and continent to continent. Institutions which make use of this technique are able to maintain a continuous presence in a market for most, if not all, of each 24 hour period. The traders themselves are able to work during daylight hours in each location, often handing off deals and scenarios as needed to their counterparts in later timezones. This practice has become common in recent decades, enabled by the rapidly decreasing communications costs made possible by modern international voice and data networking.

For example, from a London business perspective, the global day starts 8 hours early when Singapore opens for business. The London business day starts at 9am and ends at 5pm. However the global day continues through to 5 hours later when New York closes for business. This is due to different Time zones spread across these areas. Although this picture could be logically extended to run from Sydney to San Francisco, it is more typically based on the major financial centres of New York, London and Singapore.

International banking computer systems which run through the global business week are called 24 x 5.5 (rather than the 24 x 7 more common in eCommerce). Thus in terms of London time, or GMT, they open at 1am on Monday morning and close at 10pm on Friday evening.