Wall Street prepares to trade all day, although the advantages are still unclear

Is it really worth allowing stock trading all the time, every day, non-stop? For an area that respects traditions and rituals, the chimes at 9:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to begin and end the hustle and bustle of traders on the Wall Street trading floor is an irreplaceable liturgy.

The new platform would be separate from the Exchange itself – which operates only on business days – and would allow instant settlement of transactions, orders sized in dollar amounts and financing based on stablecoins (digital currencies of stable value), Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the NYSE, indicated on Monday.

Assuming it meets regulatory requirements, the platform would power a new NYSE space that would support trading of tokenized versions of stocks, the exchange noted.

But to what extent is the change necessary? Is expanding the hours and scope of operations really justified? Voices emerged for and against, taking into account different variables.

Sam Burns, chief strategist at Mill Street Research, maintains that when the market began to operate “many things were done on paper, people were standing and shouting at each other (…), then they had to write down what each one had bought and sold” and account for everything, a rhythm “impossible to follow” if the hours were very long.

The passage of decades brought the creation of electronic transaction platforms that allowed operations outside conventional hours, which has more and more followers.

According to a document published in early 2025 by the New York Stock Exchange, “after-hours trading volume has increased significantly” since 2019. And it has “skyrocketed” since 2024, with a “daily average of more than $61 billion.”

Economics professor Steve Hanke, however, has his doubts. “Historically, the idea that the advantages of trading 24 hours a day outweigh its costs has little support,” says the professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“There are few events likely to influence the market that occur outside normal working hours (…) Night trading turned out to be a waste of time,” says the academic.

For him, the only advantage in the NYSE announcement would be the time needed to complete a transaction, a process that in most stock markets occurs the next day, after verifying that everything is in order.

Another advantage that could weigh on the success of the new platform is that it would attract smaller investors and those who live outside the American continent.

New small investors, “particularly younger ones, seem to appreciate the idea of ​​being able to trade stocks at any time, as they do with cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, whether at night or on weekends,” Burns notes.

Its impact on prices could, however, remain limited. For Burns, investors with large portfolios aren’t necessarily interested in these expanded hours. And banks would not have to change their hours.

Therefore, Burns maintains, “even if the exchanges are open (continuously), if everything else is not working 24/7, it becomes difficult to align everything correctly.”