NYSE Polls Market Players About Moving to Around-the-Clock Trading

New York Stock Exchange bells — which began as Chinese gongs and have signaled the opening and closing of trading days since the late 1800s — could soon be outta work. The NYSE has begun polling participants on switching to a 24/7 trading schedule similar to how cryptocurrencies operate, the Financial Times reported. 

Ring Ring

Though the NYSE’s official hours are every weekday from 9:30 am to 4 pm ET, plenty of buying and selling occurs outside that window via electronic exchanges. Pre- and after-hours trading allows investors to react to news. If, say, Logan Roy has a stroke at 5 pm, you might want to immediately dump your Waystar RoyCo shares. But extra-curricular trading also comes with risks — orders are slower to execute and you might not get the price you expected.

Now a new era of nonstop action could be coming to the Big Board: 

• Many assets including US treasuries, major currencies, and leading stock index futures can be traded nearly every hour of the day, the FT noted. Plus, the pandemic gave rise to gamified retail investment platforms like Robinhood that offer similar flexibility. And cryptocurrencies trade all the time, every day of the week. 
• The NYSE is asking participants how investors should be protected during periods of volatility, how overnight staffing should work, and whether “time spent thinking about overnight trading would be better spent on regular market hour trading.” 

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Meanwhile, the aptly named startup 24 Exchange, which is backed by billionaire hedge fund manager and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, is seeking approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch the first 24-hour exchange in the US. So far, no letters to the SEC have raised issues with the proposal, the FT reported. So in addition to spending restless nights betting on your favorite sports teams, there’s a chance you’ll soon be doing the same with Apple and Nvidia shares.