Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Catherine Doherty is a finance reporter here at Bloomberg with
Speaker 2: a pretty specific beat.
Speaker 3: I cover the plumbing of Wall Street.
Speaker 2: She focuses on exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange
Speaker 2: and Nasdaq.
Speaker 4: Really, what I am covering and reporting on is how
Speaker 4: the whole ecosystem works.
Speaker 2: How the whole ecosystem works might be changing dramatically. In
Speaker 2: late April, the New York Stock Exchange polled market participants
Speaker 2: on how they felt about a radical idea keeping the
Speaker 2: exchange open for trading twenty four hours a day instead
Speaker 2: of from nine to thirty am until four pm Eastern.
Speaker 2: What went through your mind when you saw the New
Speaker 2: York Stock Exchange was even thinking about setting up the
Speaker 2: infrastructure for a twenty four hour trading day. I think
Speaker 2: the first thought in my mind personally was, Oh, does
Speaker 2: this extend into my protected weekends?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: When does a Bloomberg reporter ever sleep if the market's
Speaker 2: never closed? It's a good question, right, The answer is never,
Speaker 2: But concerns about her sleep schedule aside. Once she thought
Speaker 2: about it, Catherine had to admit the New York Stock
Speaker 2: Exchange had to at least start asking the question, because
Speaker 2: Like It or Not, trading outside of the Stock Exchange's
Speaker 2: opening and closing bell has become a lot more common.
Speaker 2: For one thing, there's the always on crypto market.
Speaker 4: The crypto market and other markets trade twenty four to seven,
Speaker 4: so it makes sense to at least ask the question
Speaker 4: of should we be doing this.
Speaker 2: Today on the show Like It or Not? Twenty four
Speaker 2: hour trading in US stocks is taking off, but can
Speaker 2: the market plumbing support the growing demand to trade all
Speaker 2: day and all night. I'm Sarah Holder and this is
Speaker 2: the big take from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg's Katherine Doherty says
Speaker 2: that the current trading hours for the New York Stock
Speaker 2: Exchange date back to over a century.
Speaker 4: Ago, so it really stems back to the origination of
Speaker 4: the Stock Exchange, when trades were placed in person. You
Speaker 4: had to actually go down to the floor, and there
Speaker 4: were brokers that were running orders on physical pieces of
Speaker 4: paper to make sure that they got printed and that
Speaker 4: they would actually be executed.
Speaker 2: Even though today most trading is done electronically, the original
Speaker 2: trading hours have remained the same.
Speaker 3: The hours have.
Speaker 4: Stayed because it gives a cleaner way for everyone to
Speaker 4: live their lives and buy and sell within parameters. It
Speaker 4: sets limits and that people like limits and they like
Speaker 4: rules and order, especially on Wall Street.
Speaker 2: Are we really limiting hours just so so people who
Speaker 2: work on the Stock Exchange can have saner lives.
Speaker 4: No, So think about if you're walking into a store,
Speaker 4: a grocery store in there, and you're looking for fruit
Speaker 4: and there's hundreds of apples for you to choose from.
Speaker 4: You can be a little bit more choosy, get the
Speaker 4: best one that you think is the most appealing. But
Speaker 4: if there's only two apples left and they're both rotten,
Speaker 4: that might be your only choice. So that's how I
Speaker 4: like to think about it. The bigger the better, And
Speaker 4: by setting these limits, you're essentially forcing everyone to come
Speaker 4: together and to transact during these specific hours. So it's
Speaker 4: very intentional, it is efficient, and it also creates better competition.
Speaker 4: So the more information, the more people that are expressing
Speaker 4: their value, that value is going to reflect the group
Speaker 4: as a whole, and the bigger that group is, the
Speaker 4: more accurate the price is going to be.
Speaker 3: So what about for people.
Speaker 2: Who want to trade but have their own day jobs,
Speaker 2: or they wake up in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: they're gripped by a desire to trade.
Speaker 3: Can they trade now? They can, but they can't trade everything.
Speaker 4: And the way in which they trade is different than
Speaker 4: if they were trading during normal hours. So when you
Speaker 4: are placing a trade, it isn't always going to go
Speaker 4: through immediately. Also, there are different pricing limits that are
Speaker 4: put in place. Think about when in normal trading hours,
Speaker 4: prices fluctuate in milliseconds, and that's because there's transactions happening
Speaker 4: all the time. During overnight, there's less transactions, So the
Speaker 4: prices aren't going to be the term is as tight.
Speaker 4: They're going to be wider. And so that just means
Speaker 4: that there's less transactions going on. And so you're price
Speaker 4: and what you are trying to buy a share at
Speaker 4: like a specific point at a specificum price is going
Speaker 4: to be a different experience than if you were buying
Speaker 4: during normal trading hours.
Speaker 2: But Catherine, I've definitely bought after hours on robin Hood.
Speaker 2: They just told me they'd execute it in the morning.
Speaker 2: We don't get that fun confetti. Is that not twenty
Speaker 2: four hour trading?
Speaker 3: So it is.
Speaker 4: There are options robin Hood, Interactive Broker those are apps
Speaker 4: that if you are approved to trade after hours, You
Speaker 4: very much can, and that is because robin Hood, an
Speaker 4: interactive broker, have teamed up with another venue called Blue Ocean,
Speaker 4: and Blue Ocean is essentially the grocery store that stays
Speaker 4: open later than everyone else, and so by partnering with them,
Speaker 4: they're able to give their customers the experience that you
Speaker 4: went through. That trade will be handled through robin Hood,
Speaker 4: but on Blue Ocean's venue. That's how we have evolved
Speaker 4: as a market to now offer the option to trade overnight.
Speaker 2: Since it's twenty twenty one launch, Blue Ocean has seen
Speaker 2: the number of stock transactions taking place in the average
Speaker 2: night climb to forty million shares. That sounds like a
Speaker 2: lot until you compare it to the average twelve billion
Speaker 2: shares changing hands in the regular market, But that number
Speaker 2: of overnight traders could rise as more industry players try
Speaker 2: to go nocturnal. Hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen as back
Speaker 2: to in Exchange that wants to get into twenty four
Speaker 2: hour equities trading too. The firm, aptly named twenty four
Speaker 2: Exchange is just waiting for SEC approval and is expecting
Speaker 2: an answer this fall. So what fundamentally has to change
Speaker 2: about how the stock market operates to make twenty four
Speaker 2: hour trading possible.
Speaker 4: So those are the questions that even the industry itself
Speaker 4: is trying to answer. The New York Stock Exchange they
Speaker 4: conducted a survey with some of their users to ask
Speaker 4: the question, do you even want to trade overnight? So
Speaker 4: first they wanted to identify is their demand, because in anything,
Speaker 4: if there isn't demand, no firm would want to put
Speaker 4: in resources and essentially build something that people don't want
Speaker 4: and aren't going to use. So that was the first
Speaker 4: question that they asked, and then based on responses, they're
Speaker 4: going to make the decision as a business of whether
Speaker 4: they build the infrastructure.
Speaker 2: The infrastructure right now. The need for trades to be
Speaker 2: centrally cleared, settled by a third party firm acting as
Speaker 2: an intermediary between buyer and seller is why twenty four
Speaker 2: hour trading can only run for.
Speaker 3: Five days a week.
Speaker 2: But even if the middleman issue were sorted out, not
Speaker 2: everyone is jumping at the prospect of twenty four to
Speaker 2: seven trading.
Speaker 4: In general, people don't really love change on Wall Street
Speaker 4: because change means you have to adapt how things have been.
Speaker 4: Change means you might have glitches. A lot of this
Speaker 4: is really advanced technology, so if there is going to
Speaker 4: be change, it means that you have to invest in
Speaker 4: the infrastructure to adapt.
Speaker 2: Coming up after the break, the potential and potential peril
Speaker 2: of twenty four to seven trading, and what to do
Speaker 2: with those iconic opening and closing bells if the market
Speaker 2: never closes. So far, no major exchange has yet opened
Speaker 2: up twenty four to seven trading, but Bloomberg's Catherine Doherty
Speaker 2: says that a few changes in the past few years
Speaker 2: have made the prospect of always on trading more appealing
Speaker 2: to some, if not all, market participants like forensince retail traders.
Speaker 4: This change is a continuation of the momentum that we
Speaker 4: saw post COVID and post the memestock era. That was
Speaker 4: really when the definition of trading changed and the definition
Speaker 4: of a trader changed.
Speaker 3: You could be at.
Speaker 4: Home on your couch and you still can executing and
Speaker 4: buying shares of the biggest US firms. So the definition
Speaker 4: of how you trade who is a trader evolved and
Speaker 4: it's continuing to evolve to adapt to people's lifestyle.
Speaker 2: But it's not just memestock investors looking to trade on
Speaker 2: the latest post in Wall Street Bets.
Speaker 4: The American firms that have built out overnight trading have
Speaker 4: said the most demand that they are seeing is from overseas.
Speaker 4: This is in India, it's in Japan.
Speaker 2: That makes sense because for them it isn't overnight exactly.
Speaker 4: It's customers that want access to US stocks but don't
Speaker 4: want to wake themselves up in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: So those are the kinds of people who might want
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven trading. But there are just as
Speaker 2: many saying is this really a good idea? But for
Speaker 2: Wall Street traders, for example, what are the downsides of
Speaker 2: this kind of model? When do you sleep if the
Speaker 2: markets never close?
Speaker 3: You know, I would say, oh, you wouldn't.
Speaker 4: But a lot of these firms they have global reach,
Speaker 4: and so if you are working and living in the
Speaker 4: US and you need to provide a service overnight, you
Speaker 4: might be able to tap a colleague in Asia or
Speaker 4: in Europe before you have to wake up that day.
Speaker 3: That depends on resources.
Speaker 4: So for the firms that don't have that and aren't global,
Speaker 4: you might not be able to compete in the same way.
Speaker 2: Since we usually see these huge trading volumes right after
Speaker 2: the opening bell and right before the four pm close.
Speaker 2: Could overnight trading actually smooth the mark it out?
Speaker 4: I don't think right now the volumes that are shown
Speaker 4: overnight is enough to move the needle. It's not enough
Speaker 4: to smooth everything out. And there are still market malfunctions.
Speaker 4: There's technology that goes bad. Someone forgets to flip a switch.
Speaker 4: What's crazy is that as automated as things have become,
Speaker 4: and it's very automated, there's still times that there's manual errors.
Speaker 4: So I don't think that overnight trading is going to
Speaker 4: fix all problems and smooth everything out.
Speaker 2: And what about regulators, how are they thinking about this?
Speaker 2: Are they freaking out?
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say they're freaking out. In fact, I would
Speaker 4: say they're curious. So Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC,
Speaker 4: has talked about the fact that there's an application in
Speaker 4: front of the SEC for an exchange that wants to
Speaker 4: register and offer overnight trading, and the way he talks
Speaker 4: about this is very diplomatic, and he just says, I
Speaker 4: am open for not only competition, but for innovation in
Speaker 4: the market. I want to support the market evolving.
Speaker 3: All that is good, But.
Speaker 4: Then he prefaces by saying they still need to abide
Speaker 4: by rules and regulation so that we prevent market manipulation
Speaker 4: and that we provide a He always talks about an
Speaker 4: equal playing field and a safe environment for investors, But
Speaker 4: the rules of the.
Speaker 2: Road that work for a set trading day don't necessarily
Speaker 2: work around the clock. Just think of when companies usually
Speaker 2: report earnings before the opening bill or after markets close,
Speaker 2: and that's for a reason so as not to cause
Speaker 2: wild swings in their share prices while the markets are open.
Speaker 2: If markets are open long past four pm, when will
Speaker 2: companies drop bad news. It's just one of many questions
Speaker 2: this change raises. So, Catherine, what are the odds of
Speaker 2: this actually happening?
Speaker 4: It is happening, that's not a question. The question is
Speaker 4: how does it evolve, and that will be determined by
Speaker 4: the big players getting behind it in a meaningful way.
Speaker 4: If you did have the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq,
Speaker 4: which are the two biggest stock exchanges in the US,
Speaker 4: say that they are entering the space, that would be
Speaker 4: meaningful because it would both be a signal from traditional
Speaker 4: institutional finance firms that they believe this is where the
Speaker 4: future of finance is headed, and it would also attract
Speaker 4: a bigger pool of investors potentially.
Speaker 2: What are the odds of the New York Stock Exchange
Speaker 2: adopting this model.
Speaker 4: As of today, I would say it's unlikely. And that's
Speaker 4: just that's my read of the situation. That is Catherine
Speaker 4: Doherty's prediction, and only because very recently we had Lynn
Speaker 4: Martin on TV asked about twenty four to seven trading.
Speaker 1: Let's head to thew York where Danny Berger is joined
Speaker 1: by the New York Stock Exchange President Lynn Martin to
Speaker 1: talk about why we all need.
Speaker 3: Twenty four to seven trading in our lives.
Speaker 1: Danny, Hi, Lisa, that's right, because you know, we want
Speaker 1: to be wrangling the kids and have the ability to
Speaker 1: trade while we do. Say Hyland, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us, Thanks for having me. So some others
Speaker 1: might have opinions about this, but overall, the survey that
Speaker 1: you've gotten so far from what you've heard, I know
Speaker 1: you're still in the middle of it. What have you
Speaker 1: heard so far? What we've heard is there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things to consider, mainly on the infrastructure side,
Speaker 1: which is not really a surprise.
Speaker 4: And if she's saying that, it's not to say that
Speaker 4: they might not work on it, but that takes time,
Speaker 4: and her initial read seemed to be skeptical. So I
Speaker 4: don't think this is going to happen in a meaningful
Speaker 4: way with the New York Stock Exchange anytime soon.
Speaker 2: If it ever did happen, would they have to retire
Speaker 2: the bell.
Speaker 3: I don't think they're ever going to retire that bell.
Speaker 3: They love that bell because that bell is the it's a.
Speaker 4: Symbol, it is it's their brand, and that brand is value.
Speaker 4: They have firms that will list on the New York
Speaker 4: Stock Exchange because they want their executive to get on
Speaker 4: the floor right as the market is opening and ring
Speaker 4: the bell.
Speaker 2: So even if there's no closing, no opening, you think
Speaker 2: the bell will still be told. Yes.
Speaker 4: I think it's a true marker of history, and I
Speaker 4: think again, people love consistency in finance.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Stacy Vanick Smith and Sam Potter. It was mixed
Speaker 2: by Veronica Rodriguez. It was fact by Audrian AA Tapia
Speaker 2: and Arafat Jalasho Perry. Our senior producers are Naomi Shaven
Speaker 2: and Kim Gettleson, who also edited this episode. Our senior
Speaker 2: editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beamster bor is Our executive producer.
Speaker 2: Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's Head of Podcasts. Special thanks to
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