[ I N D E P T H | 2 4 H O U R E Q U I T I E S T R A D I N G ]
“ The demand [ for extended hours ] probably comes from two market participant types. It ' s the retail brokers […] and the market makers that want to interact with retail flow, because it ' s generally considered relatively benign,” says John Fruen, head of EMEA market structure and liquidity strategy at UBS.
“ Also, the dynamics that go into an out of general hours period, which include conditions like wider spreads, probably improve the economic terms for those market makers when providing liquidity to retail.”
From a UK / EU perspective, where retail volumes are significantly reduced, the push towards expanded trading hours appears to be far weaker, with no key reason to implement the shift, at least from an institutional perspective.
“ I would say that there ' s maybe a bit of a bifurcation between institutional and retail. To my knowledge, most of the demand that is coming out tends to be either US-based or Asiabased retail demand, rather than what I would call core institutional demand,” argues Wicks.
“ Am I advocating for 24-hour trading to support our business in US equities- or any equities for that matter? Not at the moment,
“ In terms of technology, we know how to do a 24 / 5 market today. You don ' t need a revolution or innovation to do that.”
NICOLAS RIVARD, HEAD OF CASH EQUITY AND DATA SERVICES AT
EURONEXT no. Additionally, because much of the overnight demand at the moment is mainly from retail type investors, you run the risk of having slightly elevated volatility in those sessions."
Less is more? Even from an exchange perspective in the EU, no consensus has been reached on whether to expand
28 // TheTRADE // Q1 2025