Nasdaq Is Moving Toward 24/5 Trading. What Could It Mean for Market Structure?

For decades, US equity trading has revolved around a fairly fixed schedule.

The opening bell rings at 9:30am ET. Regular trading finishes at 4pm Pre-market and after-hours sessions extend that window, but the idea of a distinct trading day has remained largely intact.

Nasdaq is now seemingly changing that.

Subject to infrastructure requirements, Nasdaq plans to introduce a new overnight session running from 9pm to 4am ET, creating a 23-hour trading day, five days a week. There would be a one-hour pause between 8pm and 9pm for market infrastructure and processing.

It is not quite 24/7 trading, but it is another sign that the traditional trading day is becoming much less fixed than it used to be.

It isn't simply about how late Nasdaq will be open, it’s about why markets are even moving in this direction at all.

What is Nasdaq Changing?

Nasdaq currently operates three main weekday sessions:

• Pre-market: 4am – 9:30am ET

  
  

• Regular trading: 9:30am – 4pm ET

  
  

• Post-market: 4pm – 8pm ET

  
  

Under its Global Trading Hours model, Nasdaq plans to add an additional session from 9pm until 4am, bringing total trading availability to 23 hours a day from Sunday night through Friday evening.

In other words, the long overnight gap between after-hours trading ending and pre-market beginning on weekdays would narrow considerably.

Nasdaq has framed the change around growing international demand for US equities and the reality of an increasingly connected global market, and that international part matters.

US Equities Haven't Really Been a US-Only Market For a Long Time

The companies listed on Nasdaq may be traded in the US, but the people who want exposure to them are spread around the world.

A US trading session that feels perfectly normal in New York can look very different elsewhere.

For investors in Asia, for example, much of the regular US session takes place late at night. In Europe, it runs through the afternoon and evening.

The asset may be global, but the market hours aren't.

Extending the trading day potentially reduces some of that asymmetry.

It also reflects something that has already been happening outside the exchanges themselves. Some brokers and alternative trading venues already facilitate overnight trading in US equities, suggesting that investor demand has started moving faster than the traditional exchange schedule.

Bringing more of that activity onto an exchange could therefore be seen less as inventing a new behaviour and more as responding to one that already exists.

Why Now?

There probably isn't one single reason.

International participation in US markets has grown. Electronic markets make longer trading windows technically possible. Brokers increasingly offer overnight access. And crypto has made an entire generation of market participants accustomed to markets that simply don't close at 4pm.

Expectations around access may be changing with them.

Nasdaq's broader strategy is also notable here.

In August, it announced an agreement to acquire LeveL Markets, an off-exchange US equity execution venue, while describing the acquisition as part of its “always-on markets” strategy. Nasdaq also created a new Digital Liquidity Networks division focused on digital assets and market modernisation.

What Happens to “After Hours” When the Market Barely Closes?

This is where the change is particularly interesting. A lot of existing equity-market behaviours are built around the fact that markets close. Companies often report earnings before the opening bell or after the closing bell. Breaking news can arrive while the primary market is shut. Prices can then move sharply when broader trading resumes, creating the familiar overnight gap between one session and the next.

Longer trading hours don't make those events disappear, but they may change how price discovery happens around them.

Instead of information accumulating during a long closed period and being reflected more heavily at the next open, more of that process could potentially happen while the event itself is unfolding.

The traditional idea of “after-hours trading” starts to become harder to define when the markets are tradable almost the entire day.

24/5 is Still Not 24/7

Nasdaq's proposal does not create a market that trades continuously seven days a week, which is an important distinction.

There would still be a one-hour daily pause, and the exchange would remain closed across much of the weekend.

That makes the structure fundamentally different from crypto-native markets, where assets such as BTC trade continuously through nights, weekends and holidays.

However, traditional markets are still extending further into periods that were once clearly considered “closed,” while crypto-native infrastructure is increasingly being applied to equities and other traditional assets.

Rather than one system simply replacing the other, we may be seeing ideas move between them.

Longer Hours Don't Mean Identical Markets at Every Hour

Longer access also doesn't mean market conditions become uniform.

Liquidity can vary significantly throughout the tradable hours. Overnight markets can have fewer participants, wider spreads and different trading conditions from the core US session.

Nasdaq itself has highlighted liquidity, transparency and market integrity as important considerations in expanding trading hours, and its research notes that overnight liquidity remains lower than during the US trading day.

There are also practical questions around corporate actions, trading halts, reference prices and settlement when the traditional boundaries between trading days become less obvious.

So this isn't simply a case of keeping the exchange switched on for longer, market infrastructure has to evolve around it.

Are Stock Markets Becoming 24/7?

Not yet, but “markets close at 4 p.m.” is increasingly becoming an incomplete description of how US equities trade.

Nasdaq's move toward 23-hour weekday trading is one part of a much broader shift toward longer access, particularly as demand for US equities becomes increasingly global.

The regular session will likely continue to matter. Liquidity will still vary. Opening and closing auctions will still serve important functions.

But the assumption that meaningful price discovery has to fit neatly inside a six-and-a-half-hour US trading day is starting to look less fixed than it once did.

And as trading windows continue to expand, the more interesting question may become less when markets are open and more why they need to close at all.

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