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Trading Halt

an exchange pause in trading, called for news, volatility, or regulatory reasons

A trading halt is a pause in trading that an exchange calls on a stock, usually because news is pending or price volatility has exceeded a limit. While the halt is active, no orders execute; when trading resumes, the stock frequently gaps away from its last pre-halt price.

In short
  • Halts are called by the exchange, not by the company or by brokers. News pending and volatility are the two most common triggers.
  • The tape carries a halt code with the message: volatility pauses, news-pending halts, LULD (limit up / limit down) band breaches, and market-wide circuit breaker levels are the main classes.
  • Resumption is not a guarantee of an orderly print. The first trades after a halt often gap, because the halt itself forced information to arrive without prices moving.
How its calculated

How is Trading Halt calculated?

There is no formula: a halt is an exchange action, not a computed metric.

Halt classes Tapeboard surfaces on the live /halts feed:
  T1 / T5 / T12   regulatory and news-pending halts
  LUDP / LUDS     LULD (limit up / limit down) price-band pauses
  M / MWC1 / MWC2 market and market-wide circuit breaker classes
The code meanings come from the exchange halt-code documentation; the
feed carries the code the exchange published.

The code on the halt message tells you the trigger class, and the trigger class is the best available hint at duration. A news-pending halt ends when the news is out and the exchange lifts it. A LULD pause is a short mechanical breather meant to let a two-sided market reform inside the price band. Market-wide circuit breakers are the rarest and largest class: three escalating levels halt the whole market after index drops of 7%, 13%, and 20% from the prior close, per the coordinated SEC-approved rules.

What traders use it for

What do traders use Trading Halt for?

  • Avoiding a halt trap in a runner. A low-float momentum name that halts T5 mid-move cannot be exited until trading resumes, and resumption gaps are common in both directions.
  • Halt-reload scanning. Day traders specifically screen for names resuming from a halt, because the resumption often prints a fast, liquid move.
  • Reading the reason before the price. The same 30% gap means different things after a T5 news halt than after a LULD pause; the code is free information.
Worked example

Worked example

Worked example: $MULN
A T5 halt on a low-float runner

Suppose a $3 low-float name is up 60% on a filing headline and trading 8x its normal pace. At 12:47 ET the exchange calls a T5 news-pending halt. No shares trade for 22 minutes. At 13:09 ET trading resumes and the first prints land 14% below the last pre-halt price on heavy size (as of 2026-05-02, illustrative). The gap is not new selling pressure that "happened during" the halt; it is the first price that balances buy and sell interest after the news fully circulated.

Live data: /stock/MULN.

Common pitfalls

What are common pitfalls of Trading Halt?

  • No exit while halted. Stop orders do not protect a position through a halt; the fill prints at the resumption auction, which can be far away.
  • The code is not the whole story. Two T5 halts can resolve in opposite directions depending on what the news was; the code class alone is not tradable.
  • Halt feeds have venue labels but the tape is consolidated. A stock can appear halted on one exchange while derivatives or off-exchange prints continue elsewhere.
  • Backtests undercount halts. Historical bar data rarely marks halt windows, so backtested momentum on halt-prone names overstates achievable entries and exits.
Where it appears on Tapeboard

Where this metric appears on Tapeboard

Tapeboard surfaces a live halt feed at /halts: every halt across US exchanges with its code, halt time, and resume time, refreshed every 15 seconds, plus a dated record page per trading day (dist/halts archive). The scanner family includes halt-reload screens.

Related TERMS

Related terms

  • Short-Sale Restriction (SSR): Trigger: a 10% or greater decline from the prior day's close. Once active, SSR stays on for the rest of the session and until the close of the next one.
  • Momentum Scanner: It ranks the present, not the past. The sort key is current momentum (for Tapeboard, 5-minute price momentum), refreshed continuously in market hours.
  • Relative Volume (RVOL): Time-of-day-aware. RVOL at 10:00 ET compares against the typical 10:00 ET running total, not the typical end-of-day total.
Primary sources

Primary sources cited

See it live

See it live

The /halts page is the live record: every US halt today with its code and resume time, polled every 15 seconds, plus a dated archive page for each trading day.

Page review

Methodology last reviewed 2026-10-24 by Marcus Reilly, Editor at Tapeboard. Every claim on this page has a row in the citation registry. Glossary terms reverify on the Jan 15 / Apr 15 / Jul 15 / Oct 15 cron and any time the underlying primary-source publishes a methodology change. See methodology for the full fact-check process and corrections for the public correction log.

Disclaimer. This page is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing on Tapeboard is investment advice. See the full risk disclaimer.