Handing The Book Over Across Time Zones

A global book doesn't stop trading just because the Tokyo desk's day is ending — as Asia closes, Europe is opening, and by the time Europe winds down, the US session is underway. A handover is the structured pass-off of an open book — live positions, working orders, pending risk, and anything unusual that happened — from the outgoing desk to the incoming one, so the next shift can pick up context instantly rather than reconstructing it from scratch.

A good handover isn't just "here are the positions" — it covers what moved and why during the outgoing session, any working orders that need active management (a large order being worked over the day, a hedge that's only partially filled), risk limits that are close to being breached, and anything anomalous (a fill that looks wrong, a data feed that hiccuped) that the next desk needs to watch for rather than rediscover.

For example, a New York desk closing out might flag that a large short position was added late in the session on an earnings surprise, that a stop-loss order is still working overnight, and that one counterparty's settlement confirmation hadn't come through yet — three items the London desk needs on its radar the moment it opens, rather than finding out from a position break hours later.

Firms formalize this with a written or logged handover note precisely because verbal-only handoffs lose detail and don't leave an audit trail if something goes wrong overnight.