The Bruce Overnight Edge: I Want My $15.00

A Real $15 Dollars

Last week in BOE-18 we discussed how market structure in the overnight session allows trades to happen at inferior prices for the customer if the executing broker does not have a consolidated feed and multi-venue access. We spoke hypothetically by deep-diving into a fictitious example.

This week we’d like to highlight a real world example from two weeks ago.

On Sunday February 22nd, at 9:04:17.645pm ET, there was a trade for 1,500 shares of TQQQ at $48.75 per share. This trade occurred on a competitor ATS. As such, we do not have any information about it beyond what Bloomberg shows. We can, however, look at Bruce ATS market data at the time of the trade. And, it appears that whoever executed this trade does not have a consolidated overnight market data feed or use a Smart Order Router (SOR). In this instance, it cost their customer real world money.

For a window of over one second surrounding the 1,500 TQQQ trade, Bruce ATS displayed an offer of 48.74 for over 2,000 shares. Bruce ATS had a stable price, a better price, and enough size to fill the order. If the order had been routed to Bruce ATS instead of our competitor, the customer would have $15.00 more in their account because the execution would have occurred at $48.74 instead of $48.75 saving a penny on each of 1,500 shares.

Was this your customer that could have saved $15.00?

Maturity in the Overnight

The example above is a cherry-picked single real world example where Bruce ATS had a better price that was not accessed. We want to be crystal clear that examples like this can and do go both ways. And, we believe this is a good thing because it demonstrates how much the overnight market has matured. Routing to a single venue is no longer a viable strategy for a broker to handle client orders in the overnight session. Bruce Markets strives to win your business through superior customer service and a vibrant competitive market. Competition in the overnight session is good for all market participants and we welcome it.

By The Numbers

Weekly Top Ten Symbols¹

Overnight Notes

1. The 24x Exchange is making the news this week requesting “Temporary, Conditional Exemption From Certain Requirements of Rule 602 of Regulation NMS”. We look forward to reading comment letters on this critical equity market structure question about the line that demarks the difference between ATSs and Exchanges.

The Bruce Markets Team

¹Top Ten data is from internal Bruce ATS sources through trade date 03/06/2026.