Extended Hours Are Coming of Age – and the Market Needs to Catch Up

By Jason Wallach, CEO, Bruce Markets

This article was originally published in The TRADE News.

A window of opportunity is opening in U.S. equities – and it won’t stay open for long.

For years, extended-hours trading was largely cast aside as an “optional” session. That’s no longer defensible. Rosenblatt Securities’ January 2026 market structure report shows roughly 1.8B shares a day trading in pre- and post-market activity – 8.47% of total volume in U.S. equities. Our own analysis shows overnight notional volume has nearly doubled since November (roughly when Korean regulators allowed local brokers to resume access to the overnight session – more on that later).

Today, that growth speaks for itself. And it will become impossible to deny as cross-border distribution keeps expanding and increasingly sophisticated retail investors expect U.S. equity access that fits their local day.

In the short term, this shift will create friction around market data, routing, post-trade operations and best execution. But that disruption is the point: it’s what happens when a market grows up. The opportunity now is to build the standards and infrastructure that make extended hours durable – and to do it before the rules are written for you.

The Forces Behind the Shift

Why is this occurring? Overnight trading is being pulled forward by the same forces that have been reshaping U.S. equities ownership and participation globally: the friction of cross-border investing has collapsed, mobile distribution has lowered the barriers to entry and investors are increasingly comfortable expressing views with more precision – and more leverage – than they used to.

The numbers bear out this trend. Foreign demand for U.S. equities has surged, with year-over-year overseas holdings rising by roughly 18% as of June 2025. The growth is especially visible in Asia. Korean investors’ U.S. equity holdings have jumped from $44.2 billion at end-2022 to $163.6 billion at end-2025 – nearly a fourfold increase. And Korea isn’t the only example: over the past year, Japan’s U.S. equity holdings rose about 20%, Singapore’s climbed roughly 34%, and Hong Kong’s increased around 21%. Overnight access is simply the most practical way to meet this surging demand in time zones where the standard U.S. day runs through the middle of the night.

The Ecosystem Is Gaining Steam – But Still Incomplete

Slowly but surely, industry players are responding – and it’s happening from all corners. Leading institutions like Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial are now offering smart order routing on an agency basis, helping investors navigate liquidity across venues as the overnight ecosystem broadens. At the other end of the spectrum, leading retail broker Webull launched a consolidated overnight market data feed – including a free synthetic BBO option – to give its traders a complete, uninterrupted view of the session. On the vendor side, Exegy just launched its own consolidated feed.

These are crucial milestones in overnight trading’s evolution into a mature, durable market. Yet for every firm helping to lead the charge, there are even more still dragging their feet. Make no mistake: overnight trading is inevitable. The only open question is whether your firm will help define what it looks like – execution quality, data and client experience – or whether you’ll be forced to adopt someone else’s standard after the opportunity has already been claimed.

How to Compete Overnight

For those seeking to build for this market, I’d offer a few words of advice.

First, be demanding about market data. Consolidated overnight data and true best-price logic aren’t bells and whistles – they’re the scaffolding that lets risk, compliance and execution teams get comfortable operating outside the core session. And there’s no need to wait for the SIPs – entities like Exegy and Webull already solving for it. Any retail broker or data provider not offering this level of visibility is putting its users at a disadvantage, full stop.

Second, be adaptive around routing and best execution. A playbook that works at 2 pm can break down at 2 am. Firms should evaluate symbol eligibility based on their suitability standards for their customers, set explicit policies on order types and customer guidance – and then measure execution quality based on spreads, fill rates, price improvement, rejected orders and client outcomes. This session is still evolving; adaptability will be key.

Finally, be committed to staffing and operations. Monitoring, incident response, staffing coverage, vendor SLAs and surveillance expectations all need to match the hours your clients can trade. You don’t need perfection on day one, but you do need to take your participation seriously – otherwise, your clients will flock elsewhere and liquidity will stagnate.

Conclusion: Opportunity Knocks

The closing bell will always matter. It just won’t get the last word. Extended hours trading is becoming part of how global investors experience U.S. equities, and that shift is already shaping volumes, strategies and institutional participation. Firms that engage now aren’t just adapting to change – they’re helping professionalize the structure around it, supporting healthier, more competitive liquidity, better guardrails and the confidence needed for the market to evolve responsibly toward 24x5 and beyond.

The firms that treat this as a market structure shift – not a mere add-on – will capture the upside. Any short-term disruption that ensues is just the cost of having a seat at the table.