Trading US Shares from Australia: 24-Hour CFDs, Overnight Gaps or the ASX? (2026)

Why is this even a decision?

Because the world's most traded stocks live many hours behind Australia. The US session opens at 9.30am New York time, which is around midnight to 1.30am on Australia's east coast depending on the time of year, and closes as Australians are getting up. Every route to US exposure is a different answer to that one inconvenient fact, and each pays for its answer differently. One thing to be clear about before comparing routes: everything here is CFD trading, contracts on the price, executed on Pepperstone's rails (from 50 milliseconds with a 99.59% fill rate on its published share-CFD figures). Pepperstone does not offer real US share ownership, so if your goal is holding stock in a portfolio for years, that is a share broker's job; these are trading instruments, and the overnight financing meter covered below is the structural reminder.

Route one: trade the US session itself

The purist's answer is to trade when New York trades, and there is a real case for it.

What you gain

The deepest liquidity and the tightest spreads of the entire 24 hours, because you are trading alongside the market's full volume. The standard US share CFDs cover the cash session, commission from US$0.02 per share, and every meaningful intraday move happens while you are watching rather than while you sleep. Around earnings, when order flow is violent, that depth is worth real money per trade.

What it costs you

Your nights. A Sydney trader following the full session works roughly midnight to 6am, and "I will just trade the open" still means starting at midnight for half the year. Some genuinely night-owl traders make this work as a lifestyle; for most people with jobs and families it is a fast track to bad decisions made tired.

Route two: trade Australian hours on the 24-hour markets

This is the route the product page cannot tell you about as bluntly as a comparison can: for most Australians it is the sensible default.

What you gain

The US names during your daytime. Pepperstone's -24 markets run more than 100 US share CFDs continuously through the week, so overnight earnings become something you trade at breakfast rather than read about, and positions can be opened, managed and closed on an Australian schedule. Same commission as the standard markets, same 5:1 retail leverage, available on every platform including TradingView, which means your screeners and alerts run during hours you are actually awake to act on them.

What it costs you

Liquidity. Outside the US session there are fewer participants behind the quote, so spreads widen, news lands harder, and prices can gap between sessions. The adjustments are mechanical, trade the liquid names and prefer limit orders in quiet stretches, and the full mechanics, hours tables and cautions are in my 24-hour share CFDs explainer.

Route three: stay on the ASX

The home market deserves a fair hearing in this comparison, because for some traders it is the right call.

What you gain

Your own timezone natively, companies you can follow in local news, and on Pepperstone a clean 0.07% per-side commission on ASX share CFDs with no minimum. US moves still reach the ASX, through the miners, the banks and the index open, so a trader with a US view can often express a diluted version of it locally without ever touching a US instrument.

What it costs you

The trade is second-hand. The ASX open prices in the US session after it has happened, so you are trading the echo rather than the move, and the specific stories that drive Nvidia or Tesla have no true local equivalent.

What do the routes cost side by side?

The recurring costs are the same three lines whichever route you choose; only their weights change.

The two costs every route shares

Hold any share CFD past the daily close and financing accrues: the closing price, times your size, times a 2.5% charge plus or minus the reference rate, divided by 360, with longs paying and shorts receiving. And when a stock passes its ex-dividend date, CFD holders receive a cash adjustment rather than a dividend, credited to longs and debited from shorts, with US withholding meaning the number can differ from the headline dividend and no franking credits on the ASX side. Both lines reward traders who are in and out, and they add up against anyone using CFDs as a substitute for owning shares.

The hybrid approach experienced traders end up using

After enough time, most Australians trading US names settle into a blend rather than a single route, and it looks like this: research and alerts run during the Australian day on the -24 markets, where reacting to overnight news is possible the moment it matters; genuinely size-sensitive entries, the big positions where spread costs bite, wait for the US open when liquidity is deepest, even if that means one late night a week for the trades that deserve it; and ASX names carry the local-knowledge trades where being in the company's timezone is the edge.

The routes are tools to combine, and the account supports all three at once.

The verdict: which route fits which trader?

Night owls and full-time traders who want maximum liquidity should trade the US session directly and accept the hours as a professional cost. Everyone else with a genuine US view is better served by the 24-hour markets, treating the wider off-session spread as the fee for trading the world's biggest stocks on an Australian schedule. Traders whose real edge is in companies they know locally lose nothing by staying on the ASX at 0.07% a side. The mistake is not any of the three routes; it is drifting between them without noticing which costs you are paying.

The product mechanics behind route two are in the 24-hour share CFDs explainer, and if you are new to the platform, the account-opening walkthrough covers setup, appropriateness test included.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Pepperstone: share CFD markets, commissions and execution
2. Pepperstone: 24-hour US share trading
3. Pepperstone: trading hours