Rewriting Market Hours: 24/5 Trading via Asia-Pacific Lens

• 24/5 trading could give Asia-Pacific investors greater real-time access to US equities, shifting participation from reactive to more active engagement.
• As trading windows expand, firms will need stronger automation, monitoring, staffing models and escalation processes to maintain operational resilience.
• Success in a near-continuous market will depend on treating 24/5 trading as a strategic capability supported by robust risk controls, liquidity planning and post-trade readiness.

Traditionally, the US equities market has largely been out of reach during Asia-Pacific trading hours, limiting regional investors’ ability to respond in real-time to market moving events and often resulting in missed trading opportunities.

As the digital economy and retail investor demand reshapes expectations around access and timeliness, traditional financial markets are moving towards near continuous trading. This shift reflects a gradual convergence between decentralized and traditional finance in how investors access and engage with markets.

While continuous 24/7 trading is part of the broader industry discussion, supported by increasingly robust technology, operational infrastructure and advances in regulatory frameworks, market participants are primarily focused on moving toward 24/5 trading – extending access while allowing for essential pauses and system maintenance across trading venues and data market infrastructures.

Learn more about 24x5 trading and the future of clearing and securities services.

Overnight trading has historically been concentrated in alternative trading systems ( ATSs ), but momentum toward 24/5 trading is now building across the wider market ecosystem. Major exchanges, as well as key infrastructure and data providers, are advancing efforts to support longer trading hours.

As the industry moves to operationalize 24/5 trading, the readiness of key market infrastructure becomes critical to maintaining orderly and resilient markets. Within this landscape, clearing and settlement play a central role. In the US equities market, clearing and settlement are performed by DTCC’s subsidiary, the National Securities Clearing Corporation ( NSCC ), which acts as the central counterparty for equities transactions.

As part of this transition and subject to regulatory approval, NSCC will commence 24/5 clearing operations on June 28, enabling it to apply its central counterparty guarantee to overnight transactions immediately and support the safety and stability of the capital markets.

Securities Information Processors (SIPs), which provide consolidated, real-time market data to ensure transparency and enable informed trading decisions, are another critical component of the move to 24/5 trading. Work is underway to extend SIP operating hours to support longer trading sessions, with a current target launch date of December 6.

Despite growing interest, NSCC data indicates that overnight trading currently accounts for only around 1% of total daily notional volume. Widely reported trends suggest that this activity is concentrated among Asia-Pacific retail investors seeking access to large US exchange-traded funds and leading technology stocks during their local trading hours. While volumes remain modest, a 2025 DTCC survey signals that overnight trading sessions could represent as much as 10% of total volume by 2028.

This demand points to a broader structural shift – towards more global, time zone agnostic models that enable Asia-Pacific investors to engage with the world’s deepest equity markets in real time, rather than reacting to developments the following day. In turn, this evolution helps lay the groundwork for more sustained institutional participation, as global and domestic institutional investors seek to capture opportunities enabled by more continuous market access.

Liquidity, risk management, data flows and operational resilience take on different characteristics in a near continuous trading environment. As the industry evaluates this transition, Asia-Pacific firms face a critical question: how to capture the opportunities of 24/5 trading while maintaining robust operational and control frameworks across time zones?

Technology often takes centre stage in discussions around extended trading. In a near continuous market, compressed processing windows leave far less room for error, reducing the time available for incident response, system maintenance and exception management. These pressures are further amplified when core post trade processing and market data services must operate on a near continuous basis across multiple time zones.

As a result, Asia-Pacific firms will need to prioritize resilient and automated post-trade processing capabilities that can support extended operating windows and withstand unplanned disruption, including knock-on effects arising from periods of heightened market volatility that can propagate quickly across extended trading hours.

Clear operational ownership, continuous monitoring and surveillance will be critical to maintaining continuity. Rigorous testing will also be essential to ensure operational readiness. DTCC has been leading industry wide testing and implementation guidance, which can help validate end to end workflows and identify operational gaps ahead of go live.

Alongside technology and process considerations, continuous operations will require Asia-Pacific firms to rethink how teams are structured and supported within their operating models. Supporting extended trading also means operating with limited overnight downtime, requiring staffing models to incorporate rotating shifts, global support coverage and targeted training for overnight monitoring, incident response and major announcements.

Firms will also need to consider a robust supervisory model to ensure senior personnel are available to make key decisions related to trading and risk management. For Asia-Pacific teams, this places greater emphasis on follow the sun support and the quality of decision-making authority, underscoring the need for clear accountability, structured handovers between regions and well-defined escalation paths.

Extended trading also heightens the focus on how corporate actions are timed and processed across the market, requiring consistent treatment and clearly defined trading restrictions during corporate action events. It is thus important to consider standardised and resilient operating models that support transparency and 24/5 trading readiness.

Liquidity is likely to be lower as trading activity extends beyond traditional US market hours. During Asia-Pacific trading hours, thinner liquidity can lead to more pronounced price movements, particularly for certain portfolio structures. As activity spreads across multiple trading sessions, liquidity may become more fragmented, with wider bid ask spreads emerging at certain points in the trading day.

In addition, misaligned trading schedules between cash equities and related derivatives can further constrain the ability to adjust positions in real time. As 24/5 trading evolves, Asia-Pacific firms will need to adapt their liquidity management practices – including liquidity planning, execution strategies and funding readiness – together with operational preparedness, to support more continuous market engagement.

While longer trading hours mark progress towards greater flexibility, they also introduce added complexity across post-trade processes. Readiness for 24/5 trading is, therefore, not defined by access alone, but by the ability to preserve operational resilience, transparency, and control as trading windows expand.

For Asia-Pacific firms, this often requires a more deliberate reassessment of operating models, data frameworks and automation capabilities. Drawing on specialist post-trade expertise – particularly in areas like operating model design, process harmonization and automation – can help firms assess gaps, stress test assumptions and design approaches that are fit for a near continuous environment.

Asia-Pacific firms that approach extended trading as a strategic capability, rather than a tactical extension of existing models, will be better positioned to navigate the next phase of market evolution.