What Time Do Mutual Fund Prices Update?

Mutual fund prices update once a day, after the US market closes. The fund strikes its net asset value, or NAV, from the 4:00 p.m. ET closing prices of everything it holds, and that figure reaches your screen hours later, usually in the evening. The gap is normal, and it is why a trade confirmation shows a price that did not exist at the moment you clicked.

What time do mutual fund prices update?

The pricing moment is the close of the regular US session at 4:00 p.m. ET. Every US-listed position in the portfolio is marked at its official closing price for the day, the same print that ends the tape for everyone else. The NAV does not depend on when you sent the order or when the confirmation appeared. It depends on where the market stopped.

That final print is also the busiest instant of the trading day. The panel below averages SPY volume minute by minute across the last half hour of recent sessions.

WITH toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York') AS et
SELECT
    formatDateTime(et, '%H:%i')  AS et_time,
    round(avg(volume) / 1e6, 2)  AS avg_shares_millions
FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
  AND window_start >= today() - 45
  AND window_start <  today() - 1
  AND (toHour(et) * 60 + toMinute(et)) >= 930
  AND (toHour(et) * 60 + toMinute(et)) <= 960
GROUP BY et_time
ORDER BY et_time

The last bar of the window, stamped 16:00 ET, averaged 0.31 million shares against 0.21 million in the 15:30 bar. Order flow piles into the closing auction, and the official closing price comes out of it. A fund cannot mark its book before those prices exist.

Does the pricing time change on holidays and half days?

On a shortened session it does. When the exchanges close early at 1:00 p.m. ET, closing prices are struck at 1:00 p.m., and the fund's pricing moment moves with them. The calendar ahead carries both kinds of day.

SELECT
    formatDateTime(date, '%a %b %e, %Y')   AS day_label,
    any(name)                              AS holiday,
    any(status)                            AS day_status,
    any(if(status = 'early-close',
           formatDateTime(toTimeZone(close, 'America/New_York'), '%I:%i %p'),
           'no session'))                  AS pricing_close_et,
    dateDiff('day', today(), date)         AS days_away
FROM global_markets.stocks_market_holidays
WHERE date >= today()
GROUP BY date
ORDER BY date

12 closures sit on the loaded calendar. The next is Labor Day on Mon Sep 7, 2026, 26 days from today. Rows tagged early-close show the 1:00 p.m. ET finish in the pricing column. Rows tagged closed have no session at all, and no new NAV is struck for that date.

When does the new NAV get published?

Between the close and publication sits work the shareholder never sees. The fund accountant values every holding at its closing price, adds the income accrued during the day, subtracts the management fee and the other daily expenses, then divides by the shares outstanding at the end of the day. One number per share class per day comes out. It goes out for dissemination in the evening, and it lands on brokerage screens and quote feeds after that. Some platforms refresh overnight, so a Monday purchase can still be showing Monday's NAV on Tuesday morning. The arithmetic inside that step is broken down in how mutual fund NAV is calculated.

Four timestamps get conflated in questions about fund pricing:

• The pricing moment: 4:00 p.m. ET, when the holdings are marked.
• The publication moment: the evening, when the struck NAV is disseminated.
• The order cutoff: the deadline for receiving that day's NAV, at or before the close, and often earlier at the broker.
• The settlement moment: when cash and shares actually change hands, covered in mutual fund settlement time.

Why can I not buy at a price I have already seen?

Forward pricing is the rule at work. A mutual fund order is filled at the next NAV computed after the order arrives, never at the last published one. An order in before the cutoff gets that day's 4:00 p.m. NAV, a figure nobody knows yet. An order that arrives a minute after the cutoff gets the next business day's NAV, a full session of market movement away. No version of the transaction lets you see the price first. That single daily price, identical for everyone in the queue, is the structure laid out in when mutual funds trade. What it means for the timing of a sale is worked through in the best time of day to sell mutual funds.

Why did my international fund's NAV move differently from the market?

Fair value pricing. A fund holding Tokyo or London shares marks positions whose home markets closed hours before 4:00 p.m. ET. The Tokyo session ends in the small hours of a New York morning, and London wraps up around the New York midday. When prices move broadly during the New York afternoon, the last home-market print is stale by the time the NAV is struck, and the fund's board-approved procedures adjust those stale marks toward an estimate of current value.

How much can happen inside that window? US-listed international funds keep trading through the whole New York session, so their own open-to-close move puts a number on the price discovery that occurs while the underlying markets are shut.

SELECT
    ticker,
    round(avg(abs(toFloat64(close) / toFloat64(open) - 1)) * 100, 2) AS avg_us_session_move_pct,
    round(max(abs(toFloat64(close) / toFloat64(open) - 1)) * 100, 2) AS largest_us_session_move_pct
FROM global_markets.stocks_daily_aggs
WHERE ticker IN ('EFA', 'EWJ', 'EWY', 'SPY', 'VGK')
  AND date >= today() - 400
  AND date <  today() - 2
  AND open > 0
GROUP BY ticker
ORDER BY ticker

Over the trailing year, EWJ moved an average of 0.5% between the US open and the US close, and its largest single session came to 3.18%. SPY, holding US large caps that trade during those same hours, averaged 0.48%. Of the 5 funds listed, the international ones carry that entire move after their home markets have gone dark, and fair value pricing is the mechanism aimed at that gap. The procedure itself is covered in international fund NAV fair value pricing.

Why did the NAV drop on the distribution date?

A fund paying out income or capital gains steps its NAV down by the amount distributed, on the ex-dividend date. Cash leaves the portfolio and turns up in the shareholder's account. Per-share value falls by the same amount, and the holder is no poorer for it. Mutual fund NAVs are not quoted intraday, so the visible version of this is an exchange-traded fund, where the payout and the ex-date are both public record.

SELECT
    ticker,
    formatDateTime(any(ex_date), '%b %e, %Y')                  AS ex_date_label,
    round(any(cash_amount), 4)                                 AS distribution_per_share,
    round(any(cash_amount) / argMax(close_px, date) * 100, 3)  AS pct_of_prior_close
FROM
(
    SELECT
        a.ticker            AS ticker,
        a.date              AS date,
        toFloat64(a.close)  AS close_px,
        d.ex_date           AS ex_date,
        d.cash_amount       AS cash_amount
    FROM global_markets.stocks_daily_aggs AS a
    INNER JOIN
    (
        SELECT
            ticker,
            max(ex_dividend_date)                            AS ex_date,
            toFloat64(argMax(cash_amount, ex_dividend_date)) AS cash_amount
        FROM global_markets.stocks_dividends
        WHERE ticker IN ('DVY', 'SCHD', 'SPY', 'VIG', 'VYM')
          AND ex_dividend_date >= today() - 400
          AND ex_dividend_date <= today() - 5
        GROUP BY ticker
    ) AS d ON d.ticker = a.ticker
    WHERE a.ticker IN ('DVY', 'SCHD', 'SPY', 'VIG', 'VYM')
      AND a.date >= today() - 430
      AND a.date <  d.ex_date
)
GROUP BY ticker
ORDER BY ticker

DVY distributed $1.2472 per share with an ex-date of Jun 15, 2026, worth 0.785% of the prior session's close. Across the 5 funds in the panel, the size of each step is set by the payout, and it lands on one specific morning. A shareholder checking the price that day sees a decline of about that size with no change in what they hold. The schedule behind those dates is covered in when mutual funds pay dividends.

FAQ

What time do mutual fund prices update each day?

Once a day, after the 4:00 p.m. ET close. The NAV is struck from that session's closing prices and published in the evening, so the price on your screen in the morning is the previous session's value.

Why does my mutual fund still show yesterday's price?

Screens carry the last published NAV until the next one is disseminated. Between the 4:00 p.m. ET close and the evening publication there is no current price to display, and some platforms only refresh overnight.

Can I see a mutual fund's price before I buy it?

No. Forward pricing fills your order at the next NAV computed after it arrives. An order placed before the cutoff receives that day's closing NAV, and an order after it receives the next business day's.

What time is the mutual fund order cutoff?

Most funds use the 4:00 p.m. ET close, and brokers commonly set an earlier internal deadline for the orders they forward. The cutoff decides which day's NAV applies, not the price itself.

Why did my fund's NAV fall on a day the market rose?

Two common cases. The fund went ex-distribution, stepping the NAV down by the cash paid out, or fair value adjustments moved the marks on foreign holdings away from their stale home-market closes.

Every panel here ships with the SQL that produced it, so any number above can be checked line by line. To ask the same questions of the data yourself, put them in plain English on the Strasmore terminal.