A share listed in New York trades in its regular session for six and a half hours on a weekday and then stops. The news about the company keeps arriving through the evening, the night and the whole weekend. When the market opens again, the first trade has to account for everything that happened while it was shut.
That first trade can land a long way from the last one. The jump between them is called a gap. Nothing trades inside it, so a stop order set for a normal day has no price to fill at until the market is already past it. A leveraged position can also run short of margin in hours when there is no regular session to trade against.
Crypto exchanges that list perpetual futures on US stocks handle those hours in another way. Their contracts keep quoting at night and at weekends, because the price follows an index that keeps updating. On some of them, BloFin included, new positions can be limited to the hours when the home market is in its regular session. So the gap still arrives, just spread across the closed hours instead of all at once.
BloFin offers two ways to follow Meta's price: the METAUSDT Perpetual, a contract settled in USDT with up to 20x leverage, and the tokenized share on METAX/USDT Spot. The perpetual's price follows an index that keeps updating through every closed hour, and that movement decides how a gap reaches a position.
What happens to Meta's price on BloFin when Nasdaq is closed?
When Nasdaq is closed, BloFin's index for the METAUSDT Perpetual keeps updating, so its mark price, funding and liquidations keep running while new positions may be refused. Across 40 closed windows from August 17 to October 14, 2026, Labor Day weekend aside, the index at 9AM ET sat a median 0.35% from Meta's next open.
In other words, most of the gap is already in the perpetual's price by the time Nasdaq opens. The move is spread over the evening, the night and the weekend, and every hour of it counts toward your profit, your loss and your liquidation price. Some parts of the contract keep running through those hours, and others wait for the share to trade again. The index keeps updating every hour, weekends included, and the mark price and your unrealized profit or loss follow it. Funding keeps settling, and liquidation fires as soon as the mark price reaches your liquidation price. You can close or cut a position at any hour, while opening or adding to one may be limited until Nasdaq's regular session opens.
The limit on opening positions is the rule that turns a price move into a risk. On weeknights, weekends and US market holidays, trading in BloFin's stock futures may be restricted to reduce-only orders. These shrink or close a position and never open or add to one (source: BloFin stock futures notice). So the margin you post before the close has to carry the position through the whole window. That follows from how the META perpetual works, with its index, mark price and funding.
Funding is the one closed-hours cost whose timing can change. BloFin settles it every 8 hours by default, at 4PM, 12AM and 8AM UTC. When the rate reaches or approaches its upper or lower limit, the system can move settlement to every 1, 2 or 4 hours and back again without a separate announcement (source: BloFin funding settlement frequency notice). It did so on Sunday, September 20, 2026, settling every hour from 8PM to 11PM UTC. A position held through a closed evening can therefore pay or collect funding several times in a few hours.
What a price gap is, and why Meta's share gaps
A price gap is the jump between a share's last trade and its next one after a break, which for Meta runs from Nasdaq's 4PM ET close to its 9.30AM ET open. The largest in the 40 closed windows from August 17 to October 14, 2026 came on September 9, when the share opened 5.73% above the previous close (source: Yahoo Finance META history).
Gap risk is the chance that the price moves sharply across that break while you cannot trade at the prices in between. On September 8, 2026 Meta closed at $613.48, and the next morning it opened at $648.64 (source: Yahoo Finance META history). Anyone short at the close met the first regular trade $35.16 higher. No regular-session trade took place at any price in between.
Gaps come from anything that lands while the regular session is shut. That can be results released after the close, a product launch, a court ruling, a move in other markets or a weekend of headlines. Chart readers sort gaps into four types, common, breakaway, runaway and exhaustion gaps, depending on where they appear in a trend. For a leveraged position, though, the type matters less than the size and the direction.
Most nights the break is small. Over the same 40 windows, BloFin's index moved a median 0.77% between Nasdaq's close and half an hour before the next open. The share's own opening gap was under 1% on 23 of those 40 mornings. The few large ones are the reason to plan, since one 5% night can do more damage to a leveraged position than a month of quiet ones.
What moves the META perpetual's index while Nasdaq is shut
The META perpetual's index is built from prices that third-party data vendors quote, and it holds its last value if that data stops arriving (source: BloFin METAUSDT listing notice). In 1,440 consecutive hours from mid-August to mid-October 2026, every hourly index bar showed some movement, Saturdays and Sundays included.
The stock futures notice says those prices come from a basket of tokenized stock indices that already circulate, though neither notice names the vendors (source: BloFin stock futures notice). For a trader the useful fact is the behavior: the index kept updating in every one of those hours.
Its pace changes with the time of day. Early on a weekday morning it moves in step with the share's pre-market quotes. At 6AM ET on September 28, 2026 the index stood at 728.24 USDT and the pre-market quote at $728.20, from BloFin's hourly index and Yahoo Finance's five-minute prices. On recent weekends it moved by fractions of a percent an hour through Saturday and most of Sunday. Its larger weekend moves came from 8PM ET on Sunday onward, which is 12AM UTC on Monday during US daylight time.
The perpetual's own last price stays close to that index. BloFin caps buy orders at roughly 3% above the index and sell orders at roughly 3% below it. So even on a thin night, a trade far from the index cannot happen (source: BloFin META contract details). The tokenized share is a separate market with its own order book, which is why METAX and the perpetual can show different prices during these hours.
The September 26 to 28 weekend, hour by hour
Over the weekend of September 26 and 27, 2026, BloFin's META index stayed within about 0.9% of its Friday close, then fell 1.87% in the hour from 8PM ET on Sunday. In the 5AM ET hour on Monday it touched 3.6% below Meta's Friday close, while Nasdaq later opened just 0.22% lower.
Meta's share had ended Friday, September 25 at $751.66 and opened on Monday at $750.04 (source: Yahoo Finance META history). Seen from the share alone, that was a quiet weekend, with a gap of less than a quarter of a percent. On BloFin the same weekend had a deep dip in the middle of it, and the perpetual's price followed the index the whole way.
Time (ET) | Time (UTC) | META index, USDT | Change from Friday's 751.55 |
|---|---|---|---|
Friday 4PM, Nasdaq close | Friday 8PM | 751.55 | 0.00% |
Friday 11PM, lowest point before Sunday night | Saturday 3AM | 744.85 | −0.89% |
Sunday 8PM, as the drop began | Monday 12AM | 749.84 | −0.23% |
Sunday 9PM, after the first hour | Monday 1AM | 735.80 | −2.10% |
Monday 5AM to 6AM, the low | Monday 9AM to 10AM | 724.57 | −3.59% |
Monday 9AM, half an hour before the open | Monday 1PM | 740.67 | −1.45% |
The drop at 8PM ET on Sunday came with heavy trading on the perpetual. In that hour, 37.08 META changed hands, against an average of 8.17 META an hour across Saturday and Sunday.
Once Nasdaq opened, the share fell hard within minutes. That day StockStory reported that investors were locking in profits after a 13% weekly rally tied to Meta's Muse AI agent. It also pointed to a Financial Times report that Meta plans to sell bonds in Europe for the first time (source: StockStory). The report gives no time for that news, so whether it drove the Sunday-night fall on BloFin is unknown.
The Monday open against the weekend path
Nasdaq's opening price is where a gap ends, while the index path is the route the perpetual took to get there. In 32 of the 40 closed windows from August 17 to October 14, 2026, BloFin's index at some point sat further from Nasdaq's close than the next opening price did (source: Yahoo Finance META history).
That count is why the opening gap plays down the risk on a perpetual. A quote site measures one number, the open against the previous close. Your position lives through every hour in between. Its mark price, its unrealized loss and its distance to liquidation are set by the highest and lowest points of that path as well as by where it finishes.
The September weekend shows the difference in its sharpest form. The share's gap was −0.22%, yet the index went −3.59% at its low. A long position on BloFin carried a loss about 17 times larger than the opening gap suggests, at 5AM ET on a Monday with no regular session trading. By the time Nasdaq opened, the index had climbed most of the way back, and the regular session then took the share lower again.
The index also tends to land near the open, though the widest miss across the 40 windows was 1.25%, on that same Monday, September 28. So the perpetual usually shows you the size of the coming gap before Nasdaq does. That helps you see it coming, but it cannot stop it reaching a position that is already open.
Orders in the reduce-only window
Between Nasdaq's 4PM ET close and its next 9.30AM ET open, and through weekends and US market holidays, BloFin may accept only reduce-only orders on the METAUSDT Perpetual. Opening a position or adding to one may have to wait until 1.30PM UTC on the next weekday, during US daylight time.
A reduce-only order can still go unfilled: the flag only stops it from adding to a position or opening one in the other direction, and BloFin does not guarantee its execution (source: BloFin reduce-only FAQ).
In practice, anything that adds to a position may have to wait for the regular session. Say you hold a long and keep a resting buy order 2% lower to add on a dip over the weekend. That order may not fill until Monday's session, and the Open Orders tab shows whether it is still working. If the position may need more margin, add it with Add Margin on the position while the regular session is open.
Set or adjust any take-profit or stop-loss before 4PM ET on Friday as well. You set it in the order panel's take-profit and stop-loss option, labeled TP/SL, beside the Reduce-only box used for partial closes when trading Meta with leverage.
You can watch the index, mark price and funding countdown live on the METAUSDT Perpetual page, and the tokenized share's bids and offers on the METAX/USDT Spot page.
How stop orders slip across a gap
A stop order waits for a trigger price and then sends an order to the market. It fills at the next price on offer, which after a gap can be well past the trigger. On BloFin a stop can trigger on one of three prices, last, mark or index, and the one you pick sets the moment it fires (source: BloFin take-profit and stop-loss FAQ).
On a stock exchange the effect is easy to see. On September 28, 2026, Meta's share fell from its $750.04 opening price to $726.58 in the first five minutes, a drop of 3.13% in Yahoo Finance's five-minute prices. A broker stop set at $740 that morning would have triggered on the way down. It then sold at whatever buyers were paying next, which could have been many dollars lower.
On the perpetual, the same night moved more smoothly, because the index kept updating hour by hour instead of jumping once at 9.30AM ET. Even so, the hour from 8PM ET on Sunday took the last price from 750.19 to a low of 736.56 USDT. A last-price stop at 744.14 USDT, 1% under Meta's $751.66 Friday close, held through Saturday and most of Sunday, then triggered inside that hour and filled wherever the next bids stood. A stop with a limit price can do something different: if the price falls past its limit before it fills, it may not fill at all.
Two settings make a stop-loss on BloFin easier to predict across a closed window. A trigger on the mark price follows the smoother price that liquidation also uses, so a single stray trade cannot set it off. A market order on trigger fills for certain, at a price you cannot know in advance.
Liquidation risk through a closed window
Liquidation on the METAUSDT Perpetual can come at any hour, since it is checked against the mark price, which tracks the index. A 20x long opened at the mark price at 4PM ET on Friday, September 25, 2026 was liquidated at about 11PM ET that Sunday under BloFin's liquidation formula. Nasdaq later opened just 0.22% lower.
BloFin closes a position as soon as the mark price reaches its liquidation price, and from then on the margin can no longer be changed (source: BloFin forced liquidation rules). For an isolated long, the liquidation price comes from the entry, the leverage, the maintenance margin rate and the fee rate (source: BloFin liquidation price FAQ).
Liquidation price of a long = (entry − entry ÷ leverage) ÷ (1 − maintenance margin rate − fee rate).
For 1 META, tier 1 sets the maintenance margin rate at 2.50% (source: BloFin META position tiers). With a 0.06% fee rate, the standard futures taker fee in BloFin's fee structure, a long opened at 751.82 USDT, the mark price at Friday's close, has these levels.
Leverage | Margin for 1 META | Liquidation price | Fall that closes the long | Over the weekend of September 26 to 28 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
20x | 37.59 USDT | 732.99 USDT | 2.5% | reached late on Sunday, close to 11PM ET |
10x | 75.18 USDT | 694.42 USDT | 7.6% | the lowest mark price stayed above it |
5x | 150.36 USDT | 617.26 USDT | 17.9% | the lowest mark price stayed above it |
Funding payments change this level slightly: over that weekend a long paid about 0.14 USDT in funding, which raised the 20x liquidation price to about 733.14 USDT.
The lowest mark price before Nasdaq opened was 724.73 USDT, at about 5AM ET on Monday, 3.6% under the entry. The 20x long had lost its whole 37.59 USDT hours earlier, at a time when BloFin could refuse new positions and Nasdaq itself was shut. The 5x long was down 27.09 USDT at that low, 18.0% of its margin, which is a loss rather than an exit.
A short is the mirror case: a Meta short on BloFin opened at 751.82 USDT with 20x would have had a liquidation price of 769.71 USDT, so a weekend rise of about 2.4% would have ended it. Both sides follow the same arithmetic of leverage and liquidation: the higher the leverage, the smaller the closed-window move it takes.
BloFin's 24h change and a quote site's daily change
BloFin's 24h change compares the last price with the price exactly 24 hours earlier, a rolling window. A stock quote site such as Stock Analysis shows the change since Nasdaq's previous close and lists after-hours trading separately (source: Stock Analysis).
The two can disagree by more than a percentage point with both correct, because they measure different stretches of time. Say Meta closes at $760 on a Monday and at $740 on Tuesday, while the perpetual traded at 765 USDT in the early hours of Tuesday. Its 24h window then starts above Monday's close and covers the whole of Tuesday, after-hours fall included.
Measure | Starting point | Ending point | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
Nasdaq daily change | $760.00, Monday close | $740.00, Tuesday close | −2.63% |
After-hours change | $740.00, Tuesday close | $733.00 at 7.59PM ET | −0.95% |
METAUSDT Perpetual 24h change | 765.00 USDT at 1.40AM ET, Tuesday | 733.50 USDT at 1.40AM ET, Wednesday | −4.12% |
The practical use is in reading the screen on a Monday morning. The 24h figure at 9AM ET on a Monday covers Sunday morning to Monday morning, which can include the whole of a Sunday-night move and none of Friday's session. To size the coming gap, compare the perpetual's price with Friday's Nasdaq close instead.
Planning a Meta position before Nasdaq closes
Everything a Meta position needs for a closed window can be set while the regular session is open: the leverage, which fixes how far the index can move before liquidation, any extra margin, and the stops and take-profits. Over the weekend of September 26 to 28, 2026, the index fell as much as 3.6% below Friday's level before Monday's open.
That figure gives a working floor. A 20x long has 2.5% of room and a 10x long has 7.6%. A 3.6% weekend dip takes out the first and leaves the second with a loss to carry. The largest window in the record, the night of September 8, moved the index 5.02% before Nasdaq opened. An earnings night can do more, and on Meta's report nights the move has passed 10%, as it did at the July 30, 2026 open.
The other choice is to hold less, or nothing, across the window. Closing or cutting a position before 4PM ET on Friday removes the weekend's path from your account, at the cost of missing whatever move follows. Reduce-only orders let you close at any hour, so you can trim on Saturday if the index moves against you. Adding back waits for Monday's session.
The calendar changes the window before the year ends. Thanksgiving on November 26 and Christmas Day on December 25 each add a full day with no regular session. After US daylight time finishes on November 1, 2026, the reduce-only window runs an hour later in UTC, from 9PM to 2.30PM (source: BloFin stock futures notice).
Looking to trade Meta with the closed-hours path in view? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and go to the METAX/USDT Spot trading page or the METAUSDT Perpetual trading page. You can also browse the lead traders you can copy on METAUSDT.
Frequently asked questions
Does BloFin's META index stop moving on US market holidays?
BloFin's META index kept updating through Labor Day, Monday, September 7, 2026: Nasdaq was shut all day, yet the index changed in every hour. Over that long weekend it dipped as far as 1.28% below Meta's $616.77 Friday close, while the share reopened on Tuesday, September 8 just 0.09% lower (source: Yahoo Finance META history).
At what time does the META perpetual move most over a weekend?
In BloFin's recent data, the larger weekend moves came after 8PM ET on Sunday. In 6 of the 8 weekends from August 21 to October 12, 2026, the index's largest one-hour move came between 8PM ET Sunday and Nasdaq's Monday open. In four of them it came between 5AM and 8AM ET on Monday. Over October 10 and 11, the index ended 8PM ET on Sunday at 723.25 USDT, 0.6% above Friday's 718.97, then rose another 1.0% to 730.82 USDT by 9AM ET on Monday.
Does Meta stock fill its opening gaps the same day?
Meta's share filled its opening gap on the same day, trading back to the previous close during the session, on 24 of the 40 mornings from August 18 to October 14, 2026, Labor Day weekend aside. Larger gaps filled less often: 5 of the 17 gaps of 1% or more closed within the session (source: Yahoo Finance META history). When a gap stays open, the move a perpetual position carried through the closed hours stays in its mark price too.
Are Meta's weekend gaps bigger than its weeknight gaps?
Meta's weekend opening gaps have been smaller than its weeknight gaps, but BloFin's META index moved further behind them. Over the 7 weekends from August 21 to October 12, 2026, Labor Day weekend aside, the median Monday gap was 0.22%, while the index strayed a median 2.04% from Friday's close at its furthest point. On the 33 weeknights the median gap was 0.92% and the index's median furthest point 1.11% (source: Yahoo Finance META history).
Why does the META perpetual price differ from Meta's after-hours quote?
The META perpetual tracks an index made from prices of tokenized stocks that outside vendors quote, and it keeps trading after Nasdaq's extended session ends at 8PM ET, when the after-hours quote stops. On the night of October 14, 2026, the after-hours quote stayed at its 7.59PM ET price. From 8PM ET to 2AM ET the perpetual traded between 727.00 and 733.36 USDT, about 0.4% either side of that price.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include BloFin's stock futures notice, METAUSDT listing notice, funding settlement frequency notice and funding history, META contract details and position tiers, its help center articles on reduce-only orders, TP/SL orders, forced liquidation and liquidation price, and BloFin's hourly index, mark and last prices for the METAUSDT Perpetual. Share prices come from Yahoo Finance and Stock Analysis, and market commentary from StockStory, current as of October 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Meta in any form. A METAUSDT position keeps moving with BloFin's index while Nasdaq is shut, and over the weekend of September 26 to 28, 2026 a 3.6% dip was enough to liquidate a 20x long before the share opened almost unchanged. In those hours you may be able only to close or cut a position, and a stop can fill well past its trigger when the price moves fast. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.