The Securities and Exchange Commission will examine ways to ensure markets are set up for trading 23 hours a day, five days a week, this fall.
“It is a global market around the world, and somewhere there’s a stock exchange open and a lot of things are being traded, even in off-hours,” SEC chair Paul Atkins told Yahoo Finance in an interview on Thursday.
The SEC is looking at 23 hours a day rather than 24, leaving an hour to bring down the trading system and update software.
The SEC will hold a public roundtable on Sept. 17 to discuss the infrastructure, risks, and readiness for round-the-clock stock market operations. Exchanges are preparing to be ready by the end of the year.
“We’ll be exploring all of this,” Atkins said. “There are a lot of questions to be answered, including liquidity, that will vary, of course.”
When asked whether someone trading at 3 a.m. ET would have the same protections as someone trading between the normal hours of 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., Atkins said he has confidence the market will balance things out.
“But that’s exactly what we want to talk about at these roundtables and collect people’s ideas,” he said. “Obviously, we’re going to do this in a very responsible way, but there’s a lot of pressure already, I think, on market participants to expand the trading.”
24-hour trading is already available through retail brokerages like Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and Charles Schwab for select stocks, but it isn’t available on the major, centralized US stock exchanges.
Jennifer Schonberger is a veteran financial journalist covering markets, the economy, and investing. At Yahoo Finance, she covers the Federal Reserve, Congress, the White House, the Treasury, the SEC, the economy, cryptocurrencies, and the intersection of Washington policy with finance. Follow her on X @Jenniferisms and on Instagram.
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