The single name's trading day

Every track ends its first module on the shape of the day. The equity day is the gentlest so far - auction, continuous session, auction, no overnight margin sweat for a cash holder - with two interruptions all its own.

The ordinary day

The open auction absorbs the overnight; the continuous session runs with lesson 3's flows and a midday lull; the closing auction concentrates the finale. Liquidity is U-shaped - deepest at both ends - and out-of-hours sessions exist for many markets but carry thin books and wide spreads: prices move there, but conviction about those prices should wait for an auction. A cash owner, notably, can ignore all of it: no daily settlement, no funding timestamp, no forced attention. The day matters when you trade, not while you hold.

Interruption one: the halt

A name can be stopped mid-session - pending a material announcement, after a disorderly move trips a circuit, or because the company failed an obligation. Orders rest, nothing trades, and the resumption is often an auction with a gap. The practical point: a stop-loss cannot execute through a halt, and the resumption price owes nothing to the last trade - the equity version of the gap lesson every track has taught, delivered by referee's whistle rather than by clock.

Interruption two: earnings land outside the day

• Results are published deliberately outside trading hours - before the open or after the close - so the reaction happens in an auction, not a scramble.
• The consequence: earnings risk is gap risk by construction. A holder through results will not get a continuous exit; the next print is the opening cross, wherever it lands.
• Modules 2 and 4 build on exactly this: reading the gaps, and the standing choice about holding through them - the equity calendar's teeth, quarterly, per name.