Weekend risk is gap risk with a longer fuse. Two full days of headlines - geopolitics, regulatory action, corporate announcements, crypto contagion - land on a market that cannot price them until Monday's open.
It is asymmetric by instrument. Crypto trades continuously and so has no weekend gap, though it has thinner weekend liquidity and more violent moves. Equity index futures reopen Sunday evening, so the exposed window is shorter than for cash equities. Single-stock positions carry the longest gap and the most name-specific headline risk.
The practical handling is a policy, not a case-by-case decision: either you carry weekend positions at reduced size with a defined worst case, or you do not carry them. Deciding on Friday afternoon while looking at an open profit is the version that goes wrong.
Related: gap-risk, overnight-exposure, overnight-exposure-limit, worst-case-loss