Nasdaq moves to near 24-hour trading. Some say that’s a bad idea

Nasdaq is moving closer to around-the-clock stock trading, a shift that some on Wall Street are calling unnecessary — and potentially destabilizing.

The exchange said it plans to submit paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow U.S.-listed equities and exchange-traded products to trade nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week. If approved, the new schedule would launch in the second half of 2026.

Under the proposal, Nasdaq would expand trading hours to 23 hours each weekday from the current 16 hours. Stocks would trade in a “day session” from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time, followed by a one-hour pause for maintenance, testing and clearing. A “night session” would then run from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. the following morning.

Critics argue that formalizing nearly nonstop trading could worsen some of the very problems that plague the structure of equity markets today — thin liquidity, sharp price swings and an increasingly “gamified” trading environment.

‘Worst thing in the world’

“This is literally the worst thing in the world,” the Wells Fargo trading desk wrote in a note to clients. “I cannot think of an action that single-handedly gamifies the stock market even more than it has already become. This is the epitome of making trading even more like gambling.”

Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets and a former market maker on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, raised concerns about the impact on listed companies themselves.

“Listed companies need a time to break and release news events and to have meetings where they’re not moving markets, and now we’re taking that away from them,” Woods said. “You’re opening up a new can of worms.”

Nasdaq currently operates three weekday sessions: pre-market trading from 4 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., the regular session from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and after-hours trading from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Retail-focused brokers, including Robinhood, have already rolled out extended or near-24-hour trading for certain U.S. stocks and cryptocurrencies, responding to demand from individual investors who want the ability to trade on global news at any time.

The New York Stock Exchange is pursuing its own extended-hours model, with plans for 22 hours of weekday trading that won initial SEC approval in February, contingent on data-feed upgrades.

Liquidity cluster

Wells Fargo added that most liquidity already clusters around the market open and close, making the idea of stretching trading hours even further counterproductive.

“Most of the complaints that I hear on market structure are about how bad volumes are as most comes in around the open and close,” the note said. “And the industry move is to then elongate the trading day even further? This makes no sense at all.”

While Nasdaq says extended hours could eventually attract more participation, skeptics ask whether firms would be forced to staff trading desks around the clock.

“We know between 9:30 and 4, most traders are at their desk. The biggest institutions are working,” Woods said. “Are we going to have to add a whole new ecosphere of traders and institutions to man the desks so they can participate around the clock?”

Woods believes pauses in trading serve a purpose, enabling markets to digest information and participants to reset.

“We take breaks for a reason,” Woods said. “Let’s recharge the batteries. Let’s all get on the same page. We already have volatility … during the day. If things move too far, too fast, we take a pause.”