Set your alarm. Starting Dec. 6, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq plan to trade stocks and ETFs 23 hours a day, five days a week. Dean Seal reported it in Thursday’s Journal (B10). You’ll be able to buy a share at 2 a.m. You probably shouldn’t.
The NYSE also said Monday, Oct. 19, that it will add options trading outside the regular day. That means about two hours before the 9:30 a.m. ET open and 15 minutes after the 4 p.m. close. Cboe Global Markets (CBOE) is adding extended-hour options too. The exchanges say customers want it. Duke finance professor Campbell Harvey says the real reason is survival. Newer platforms, many offshore or built on crypto, already trade around the clock. The old exchanges have to be open when traders want to trade, Harvey says, or lose them.
There’s a fairness case. Big economic reports often come out an hour before the opening bell, and professional traders can act on them first. In theory, longer hours close that gap. Now the catch. Most trading will still happen in daylight. At midnight, far fewer buyers and sellers will be around. With so few on hand, the gap between what buyers bid and sellers ask can widen a lot. The paper’s word for the prices some overnight traders could get is punishing.
The night shift is coming to every exchange
Harvey sees 23 hours as a way station. He expects every exchange to go 24-7 in the end. The SEC held a roundtable last month on 24-hour stock trading, and Chairman Paul Atkins asked companies how it would change their disclosure duties. The exchanges will pay for night staff, risk controls and market makers without much new volume. Harvey thinks the shift can’t be stopped. “So get used to it,” he said.
Our read
Investments/Risk · IN04, with a Behavioral note. More hours don’t make better prices. For a long-term owner, the ability to trade at 2 a.m. is worth nothing. The temptation to trade at 2 a.m. can cost real money. News breaks at night, a stock gaps, and the thin overnight book fills your order at a price you’d never accept at noon. The desk’s rule for the model books is simple. We trade in the regular session, and we don’t chase headlines after dark. Nothing about this changes what we hold. Hold.
Your connection is one setting in your brokerage app. Open the order screen and look at two things. First, the order type. A market order takes whatever price is there. A limit order names your price and waits. Overnight, that difference is the whole game, so make the limit order your default. Second, see whether your broker will let your orders fill overnight, and whether that is switched on. Look before Dec. 6, and look for a parent or a teen with a new account too. You set the thermostat before the cold snap, and a plan review is where that setting gets a second look.