Nasdaq just dropped a bombshell: they want to turn the stock market into a 24/5 operation. No more waiting until 9:30 a.m. to trade—they’re eyeing round-the-clock action, Monday through Friday.
Here’s the deal. Right now, the Nasdaq closes at 4 p.m. ET and doesn’t reopen until the next morning. But Nasdaq President Tal Cohen thinks that’s so 2020s. The company plans to file papers with the SEC soon, with a potential launch in the second half of 2026. Basically, they’re saying: why should traders sleep when there’s money to be made?
The reasoning is actually pretty smart. Global investors are hungry for U.S. markets. Foreign holdings of American equities have nearly doubled since 2019, hitting $17 trillion as of June 2024. That’s a lot of people in Tokyo, London, and Sydney who want to trade when it’s their business hours, not ours. More than 56 ETFs tracking the Nasdaq 100 launched in the last five years, and 98% of them came from outside the U.S. These folks aren’t going away—they’re just waiting for convenient trading windows.
Cohen’s pitch is compelling: 24-hour trading would democratize access, attract more global capital, and let U.S. markets compete in a world that never stops moving. It’s the kind of modernization argument that sounds great in a boardroom.
But here’s where it gets messy. The NYSE already tried this with NYSE Arca, proposing 22-hour trading last fall. Their application is still pending with the SEC, which tells you something about how complicated this actually is.
The challenges are real. Overnight trading would mean way less liquidity, which translates to wider spreads, higher volatility, and potentially brutal transaction costs. Imagine trying to sell 10,000 shares at 2 a.m.—good luck getting a decent price. Corporate executives are also nervous. A Nasdaq survey found that roughly half of listed companies have reservations about expanded hours, especially regarding liquidity and how corporate actions would work.
Then there’s the infrastructure nightmare. U.S. markets process millions of messages per second. Adding 24-hour trading means coordinating across the entire industry—exchanges, brokers, clearing houses, regulators. One mistake, and the whole system could hiccup. Cohen acknowledges this, noting that “seamless industry-wide coordination, thoughtful planning, testing, and coordinated implementation” are essential.
So is this actually happening? Cohen seems confident, arguing the question isn’t whether they *can* build a 24/5 market, but *how* to do it without breaking investor confidence.
The bottom line: Nasdaq is serious about this, but it’s not a done deal. The SEC has to approve it, the industry has to align, and they have to solve some genuinely thorny problems. If it works, it could reshape how global investors access U.S. markets. If it doesn’t, we’ll be back to the drawing board—probably around 4 p.m. ET.
