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Day Trading — Crossing Markets
For those of you who have day traded, you know how much you want to hit your profit mark before the market segment ends and the other market segment begins.
For those of you who don’t know what I mean, there are three market segments.
Pre-Market: 7am-9:30am
Market: 9:30am-4pm
After Market: 4pm-8pm
When 8pm hits, there are no more trades that can be placed until the next day at 7am during the pre-market.
As of August 12th 2026, I was in a trade during pre-market hours. My stock was above my execution price which meant I was in the profit zone. My goal was to take a profit of $3.50 before the market hours began. By the way the price was behaving, I had a feeling I would need to take the trade into market hours… something I don’t like to do due to the risky nature of how stocks behave when the market opens. The price could spike and continue to spike throughout the day or the price could drop and slow down to a crawl. No, something worse happened. The stock kept halting.
A halt is when stock activities come to a… halt. The price stops moving, you can’t buy, you can’t sell, you can’t set stops or do anything of that nature. You must wait until the halt stops amd the price starts moving again.
