Webinar: 25 June 2025 at 10am UK Time
Reference: Waking up to an equity market that will never sleep – Future of Finance
What the event was about?
After hours trading of stocks has increased in recent years, chiefly because retail traders based in Asia and Europe want to trade US equities before they go to work or after they return from work. It also gives them an opportunity to profit from out of hours announcements that affect stock prices – a benefit for which they are prepared to run the risks of illiquidity and volatility. But out-of-hours trading is also part of something bigger: a transition to all-hours trading of financial assets, whose denouement may be visible already in the un-intermediated decentralised exchange (DEXs) and automated market makers (AMMs) of Decentralised Finance (DeFi).
Why it happened
- How do the service providers such as Blue Ocean get paid (e.g., transaction fees, market data sales)?
- Out of hours trading has increased significantly in recent years. Why is that?
- What does the equity trading data reported to FINRA tell us about what is happening with out-of-hours trading (especially when trades are always reported the following day)?
- What does Blue Ocean’s data tell us?
- What are the benefits (e.g., getting ahead of the market on news released after closing, capturing market price falls) and risks (e.g., lack of liquidity, lack of volume, wider spreads, poorer prices, greater volatility, limits on types of orders to, say, limit orders as at Blue Ocean) of out of hours trading?
- There are 8,500 stocks listed in the US NMS. Is trading activity focused on a small range of stocks or a wide range of stocks?
Who took part
- Who is doing out-of-hours trading and why (i.e., is it driven mainly by retail or by institutional investors, or prop traders and hedge funds, or family offices – and how does their behaviour differ)?
- Are some people specialising in out of hours trading?
- Market participants can trade before markets open and after markets close. Where are you seeing activity concentrate and why?
- Does out of hours trading reflect mere geography (i.e., Asians and Europeans are active before Americans) or does it reflect a change in trading strategies?
The infrastructure and competition
- To what extent are brokers a constraint on out of hours activity (e.g., not all offer a service)?
- Are there active market makers in out of hours trading?
- Blue Ocean does not have out of hours trading to itself. NASDAQ offers out of hours trading between 4.00 and 09.30 am and 4.00 and 8.00 pm; NYSE Arqa is extending weekday trading to 22 hours between 1.30 am and 11.30 pm EST; and the SEC licensed the proposed 24X National Exchange. On what criteria does competition take place (e.g., opening hours, transaction fees)?
- How do you guarantee constant service availability for brokers and traders (i.e., in terms of prices, access, connectivity, staff available to fix issues, resilience and business continuity)?
- How are trades (a) cleared (e.g., via a Blue Ocean clearing firm with access to NSCC) and (b) settled (e.g., the custodian bank of the broker with access to DTCC)?
The future
- Trading at Blue Ocean is presently 8/5 – why not 24/7?
- Do the actions of the Trump administration threaten to reduce global interest in trading US equities?
- Do developments in the cryptocurrency and Decentralised Finance (DefI) markets, such as decentralised exchanges (DEXs) and Automated Market Makers (AMMs), presage a different future for out of hours securities trading – and what do your broker-dealing clients make of the prospect?
The audience:
Asian and London/European based broker-dealers, agency brokers, asset managers, hedge funds, investment banks and sell-side trading desks. Trading Infrastructure Providers to form partnerships
Job titles:
Head of Trading, Head of Electronic Trading, Portfolio Manager, CIOs, Head of Market Structure, Quant Trader, Chief Operating Officers, Director of Connectivity, Exchange Relationships, Algo Strategy Leads.
When it happened
At 10.00 London time on Wednesday 25 June 2025.
Who is on the panel?
Brian Hyndman, CEO at Blue Ocean Technologies
John Willock, Head of Strategy and Market Data at Blue Ocean Technologies
Steve Bombardiere – Managing Director, Head of Equity Trading at Mirae Asset Securities (USA) Inc.
Rachel Bradford – Head of Trading & Execution, FUTU US Inc.
Moderated by Dominic Hobson, Co-Founder at Future of Finance
