While organizing the trading hours of the U.S. stock market, I only then realized that if you’re in Taiwan and want to follow U.S. stocks, you really have to get the time difference right—especially the time when the U.S. market’s closing prices are released. It’s currently daylight saving time, so regular U.S. stock trading hours are from 9:30 PM to 4:00 AM Taiwan time. In winter, the schedule shifts back by 1 hour, becoming 10:30 PM to 5:00 AM.

I also found out that the U.S. stock market isn’t centralized in a single exchange like Taiwan’s. Instead, three main markets operate at the same time: the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and the American Stock Exchange. Although these three exchanges have the same opening and closing times, because they operate independently, the price of the same stock on different exchanges may differ slightly. For example, NASDAQ is mainly tech stocks—so companies like Microsoft and Apple are there.

What’s more complicated is that the U.S. stock market also has pre-market and after-hours trading. Pre-market is from 2:30 PM to 9:30 PM Taiwan time, and after-hours is from 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM (during daylight saving time). So, if you want to track changes in U.S. closing prices, you need to pay attention to these time windows. Also, U.S. markets close for American holidays—like Independence Day and Thanksgiving—so you need to be especially careful to avoid trying to trade when the market is simply not open.

People in Taiwan who trade U.S. stocks probably have had this experience: sometimes it’s the middle of the night Taiwan time when the U.S. market trading peak is happening. You really have to adjust your schedule to react to the market in time. How do you handle the time difference?