Round-the-clock trading is gaining ground with more options for investors opening up.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced it will host a roundtable on September 17, 2026, to examine the United States' march toward 24-hour equity markets with SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins stating on July 23 that “with the expansion to overnight trading, I'm excited at the prospect of US equity markets aligning with those markets that already trade continuously and look forward to balancing round-the-clock trading with all-important investor and customer protections."
The roundtable will cover overnight trading preparations, market operations and resiliency, and the opportunities and challenges of expansion and its timing reflects how quickly the landscape is shifting.
Institutional equity traders have expressed skepticism about the expansion of round-the-clock stock trading, warning that extended hours could negatively affect execution quality, fragment liquidity and create new operational and human-capital challenges.
While the major exchanges are still some time away from going live with extended sessions, retail investors in the US can already trade US equities through the night with the market for operating on a parallel track away from the NYSE and Nasdaq, through a network of FINRA-registered Alternative Trading Systems.
Blue Ocean ATS, which commands approximately 90 percent of overnight ATS volume, runs a session from 8pm to 4am ET Sunday through Friday, enabling broker-dealers to route retail and institutional order flow when the exchanges are dark.
Robinhood was the firm that forced the issue. When it launched 24/5 trading in May 2023 with access to 43 securities, the competitive pressure on established brokerages was immediate. By 2026, Robinhood supports more than 1,000 symbols in overnight sessions.
Charles Schwab followed, making 24/5 trading available to all retail clients through its thinkorswim platform, covering S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 stocks and more than 600 ETFs, building on TD Ameritrade's 2018 launch of the first US retail overnight trading product.
Interactive Brokers goes further still, offering near-24/6 access with only a 10-minute maintenance break each morning.
Firstrade entered the overnight space on April 7, 2025, covering more than 1,200 stocks and ETFs via Blue Ocean. Fidelity and E*TRADE currently offer extended hours from 4am to 8pm ET, but have not yet launched true overnight sessions, though Fidelity is reported to be developing expanded overnight access.
However, the infrastructure underpinning all of this is thinner than regular-hours trading.
There is still no official consolidated tape for the overnight session (no overnight National Best Bid and Offer) and market orders are typically disabled to protect investors from filling at unexpected prices. Liquidity during these sessions, while growing, remains a fraction of what it is during regular hours.
The major exchanges are now converging on the same destination. The SEC granted NYSE Arca accelerated approval in February 2025 to extend trading to 22 hours a day, five days a week, with a December 2026 launch target.
The SEC approved Nasdaq's 23/5 proposal on April 10, 2026, and Cboe Global Markets filed its own near-24×5 proposal for the Cboe EDGX Equities Exchange in March 2026, also targeting December 2026.
On July 21, 2026, London Stock Exchange Group announced plans to launch LSE 24, a new 24/5 trading venue designed to support near-continuous trading from Monday to Friday.
"The launch of LSE 24 marks an important step in the evolution of our markets, providing clients with greater flexibility beyond traditional trading hours and supporting more digital, connected global markets," said Julia Hoggett, CEO of LSE plc and head of digital and securities markets at LSEG.
Client testing is expected by the end of 2026, with exchange-traded products launching in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval. The move by the LSE signals that extended-hours trading is becoming a structural shift in global equity markets, not a niche product feature.
What separates today's overnight retail access from the exchange-level 24/5 model being built for late 2026 is clearing infrastructure.
The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation's National Securities Clearing Corporation targeted June 2026 to begin operating on a 24×5 basis (Sunday at 8pm ET through Friday at 8pm ET), a prerequisite for any major exchange to process overnight trades with the same settlement guarantees that apply during regular hours.
Until that infrastructure is fully live, overnight trading carries the structural limitation of being off-exchange: thinner books, wider spreads, and no consolidated market data. Financial advisors helping clients navigate extended-hours trading have long flagged these risks, and the September SEC roundtable is expected to surface them formally.
The expansion of trading hours raises a practical question for financial advisors: how do you manage client behavior in a market that never closes?
The danger is well documented by behavioral finance research. Extended access encourages reactive, emotionally driven trading. Market-moving news breaks around the clock, and overnight sessions with thin liquidity can see prices move sharply on relatively small order flow.
Advisors whose clients are using platforms like Robinhood or Schwab to trade overnight may find they are reacting to price swings that look dramatic but reflect the illiquidity of the session rather than any fundamental change in value.
The constructive case is different. Overnight access gives clients the ability to respond to genuine events such as an earnings release, a geopolitical development, or a central bank decision, on their own schedule. For clients in different time zones, or those who cannot monitor markets during regular hours, the option to act at 11pm. rather than waiting for the 9:30am bell has real practical value.
The broader debate around 24-hour trading and its implications for wealth management professionals will intensify as exchange-level extended sessions approach.
The SEC's September roundtable, open to the public and live-streamed on SEC.gov, will be a key marker of where the regulator stands on investor protection in a market structure that, for retail investors, has already changed.
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