CashboardGlossary · Trading
What is the weekend gap?
A weekend gap is the jump between a market's Friday close and its next open, or between a closed stock and a token that keeps trading.
How does the weekend gap work?
Stock exchanges close for the weekend, so Saturday news waits until Monday. If a stock opens well above or below Friday's close, the chart shows an empty space. That is the gap. For years Bitcoin traders watched the CME gap, left when CME futures paused while spot kept trading. CME has since moved its crypto futures to round-the-clock trading, apart from a short weekly maintenance window, which mostly retires the classic CME gap.
Tokenized stocks and stock perps turn the gap into something you can watch. They trade around the clock, so over a weekend they keep repricing on crypto traders' views while the stock itself sits frozen at Friday's close. The distance between the two is a live weekend gap.
Picture a stock that closes Friday at $200. On Sunday, after news about a competitor, its perp trades at $208. If the stock opens Monday at $207, the perp called most of the move. If it opens at $199, perp traders misread the news and anyone long has a painful Monday.
A big gap is not always a forecast. Weekend token prices can come from thin liquidity rather than new information, and some issuers pause minting and redemptions while the market is closed, which loosens the link to the stock.
Also called: Monday gap, weekend price gap, CME gap.
Where does the weekend gap show up in Cashboard?
On Saturdays and Sundays (UTC) the Tokenized stocks widget labels the distance between an xStocks token and the stock's frozen Yahoo Finance quote as a weekend gap, with the Hyperliquid stock perp alongside where one exists. The Robinhood stock tokens widget shows the same distance for Robinhood Chain stock tokens as a premium in basis points on its top eight rows, dimmed and tagged closed while the market is shut. The Stocks widget keeps showing that last close until the exchange reopens. You can put a weekend read to the test with a paper long or short on the stock itself in the Paper trading widget, but it marks at that same Yahoo quote, so nothing moves until Monday's open.
Frequently asked questions
Do weekend gaps always close?
No. Gaps getting filled is a tendency traders like to talk about, not a rule. Plenty of gaps stay open for months, and some never fill.
Related terms
Last reviewed . Market data in Cashboard comes from the providers named on each widget and may be delayed. Nothing here is financial advice.