Thursday, November 20, 2025, NASDAQ Market Site, New York, USA.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Nasdaq is moving closer to 24-hour stock trading, but some on Wall Street say the change is unnecessary and could be destabilizing.
The exchange said it plans to file documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded products to trade nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week. If approved, the new schedule would begin in late 2026.
Under the proposal, Nasdaq would expand weekday trading hours to 23 hours from the current 16 hours. The stock will trade in “day trading” from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, followed by a one-hour pause for maintenance, testing and liquidation. The “Night Session” runs from 9pm until 4am the next morning.
Critics argue that formalizing near-nonstop trading could exacerbate some of the very problems plaguing the structure of today’s stock markets: thin liquidity, rapid price fluctuations, and an increasingly “gamed” trading environment.
“The worst thing in the world”
“This is literally the worst thing in the world,” Wells Fargo’s trading desk wrote in a note to clients. “I can’t think of anything that single-handedly gamifies the stock market more than it already has. This is the epitome of making trading even more like gambling.”
Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets and a former New York Stock Exchange market maker, expressed concern about the impact on publicly traded companies themselves.
“Public companies need time to interrupt news events to announce things and have meetings in places that don’t move the market, and we’re taking that away right now,” Woods said. “You’re opening a new can of worms.”
Nasdaq currently operates three trading sessions on weekdays: pre-market trading from 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., regular trading from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and after-hours trading from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Retail-only brokers, including Robinhood, have already rolled out extended trading or near-24-hour trading in certain U.S. stocks and cryptocurrencies, in response to demand from individual investors who want the ability to trade global news at any time.
The New York Stock Exchange is pursuing its own extended-hours model, with plans for 22-hour weekday trading that first received SEC approval in February, subject to data feed upgrades.
liquidity cluster
Wells Fargo added that most liquidity is already concentrated at market openings and closings, and the idea of extending trading hours would be even more counterproductive.
“Most of the complaints I hear about market structure are about how bad the volume is, as it occurs near the opening and closing prices,” the memo said. “And the industry’s move is to extend the trading day even further? This just doesn’t make sense.”
Nasdaq has said extending business hours could eventually attract more participants, but skeptics question whether companies will be forced to staff their trading desks 24 hours a day.
“We know that between 9:30 and 4, most traders are sitting at their desks. The largest financial institutions are working,” Woods said. “Do we need to add a whole new environment to staff the desks so that traders and institutions can participate 24/7?”
Woods believes the purpose of the trading pause is to allow the market to digest the information and allow participants to reset.
“There’s a reason we take breaks,” Woods said. “Let’s recharge our batteries. Let’s all get on the same page. We already have volatility…during the day. If things are moving too fast, we’ll pause.”
