NEPSE After Market Order (AMO), explained.

What is an After Market Order?

An After Market Order, written AMO and rendered in Nepali as आफ्टर मार्केट अर्डर, is a buy or sell order you submit while the market is closed. It does not trade when you place it. It waits in the queue and is sent for execution when the next session opens.

The rule behind it arrived in April 2026, when the Securities Trading Operation Regulations were amended so orders could be submitted outside the regular window. That amendment sat unimplemented for months while NEPSE prepared the operational side. The feature went live in the TMS on 13 August 2026. If you last read that off-hours ordering was still coming, that is now out of date.

What are the AMO timings?

NEPSE gives the window as 5:00 PM to 10:00 AM the following day. Outside it the TMS will not accept an after-market order at all. For the step-by-step, NEPSE points users to the AMO User Manual under Help in the TMS, reached from your TMS code at the top right.

The TMS shows it the same way it shows the trading day, as a named session in the Active Sessions strip: AFTERMARKET (17:00:00 - 10:00:00). If you are unsure whether the window is open, that strip is the answer.

It closes at 10:00 AM rather than running to the bell because Pre-Open starts at 10:30. Orders entered overnight are in the book before the market opens, so they can take part in the opening call auction rather than arriving in the middle of it.

Does AMO mean trading happens after hours?

No, and this is the distinction worth being clear about. AMO covers order entry only; execution is unchanged. NEPSE still operates its standard sessions:

• Pre-Open: 10:30 to 11:00 AM NPT, Monday to Friday.
• Continuous trading: 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM NPT, Monday to Friday.

Orders placed outside these windows simply wait in the queue. No matches occur, no prices move, and no trades settle until the next trading session begins.

What does this change practically?

Before AMO, if you read news about a company at 9:00 PM and wanted to place a buy order, you had to remember to do it the next morning before 3:00 PM. If you forgot or were busy, you missed the day's session.

Now you can act when it suits you:

• Queue a buy or sell order the night before, at your leisure.
• Prepare a limit order outside market hours for a stock you have been watching.

The order waits in the queue and executes (if matched) once continuous trading starts on the next scheduled session.

What should you watch out for?

• Day order expiry: If your order is a day order (the default on most broker TMS platforms), it expires at 3:00 PM on the first trading day it is active, whether or not it was executed. A buy order placed Thursday night for Friday will expire at 3:00 PM Friday if not filled.
• Stale price risk: You are placing a limit order based on the last known close. Overnight or over the weekend, significant news may emerge that makes your limit price either too aggressive or too conservative. Placing an order tonight does not lock in any guarantee of execution at a price you consider fair.
• The window is not the whole night: outside it the TMS will not take the order at all. The window closes at 10:00 AM, so an order you think of at 10:30 waits for Pre-Open like any other.
• Where to find it: AMO lives in the trading system, so it reaches every broker running the standard TMS. The AMO User Manual under Help, reached from your TMS code at the top right, is NEPSE's own walkthrough.

How does this fit with NEPSE's other 2026 changes?

The April 2026 amendment that enabled AMO also widened the daily price limit from 10% to 15% and the new index circuit breaker rules. Read the circuit breakers article to understand what happens when the market halts mid-session. For the full picture of how NEPSE sessions work, see NEPSE trading hours.

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