The Bruce Overnight Edge: Money Never Sleeps – 25 Realities of the 24x5 Ecosystem

The Bruce Overnight Edge: Money Never Sleeps – 25 Realities of the 24x5 Ecosystem

April 17, 2026 - Chicago, IL

For our 25th edition of the BOE, we bring you 25 Things To Know About The Overnight Market And Bruce ATS

THE OVERNIGHT SESSION1

  1. Market Hours - Trading in the overnight session occurs from 8:00pm ET to 4:00am ET, Sunday night through Friday morning. The overnight session facilitates a true 24x5 trading environment.

  2. Active Venues - There are 3 active venues in the overnight market today: Bruce, BOATS, and Moon.

  3. Volume Growth - In 2026, the overnight session is averaging 139M shares per session compared to an average of 78M (+77%) in 2025.

  4. Notional Growth - In 2026, the overnight session is averaging $4.2B notional per session compared to a 2025 average of $2.5B (+68%).

  5. Dollar vs SubDollar Shares Traded - In 2026, ~62.5% of all shares traded have had a price $1.00 or above.

  6. Dollar vs SubDollar Notional Traded - In 2026, ~99.7% of all notional traded has come from trades with a price of $1.00 or above.

OVERNIGHT MARKET STRUCTURE

  1. The Night is Lit - Contrary to what may have been heard at #STANY2026 earlier this week, the overnight session does not happen in “Dark Pools”. All three venues operating in the overnight market are lit venues that disseminate market data and offer strong transparency and price discovery.

  2. Technologically Diverse - The three ATS venues operating overnight today all operate on different technology stacks. Bruce utilizes Nasdaq’s technology while Boats uses MEMX tech and Moon operates on Fundamental Interactions tech. This diversification is a testament to the maturity of the overnight session.

  3. The Pause - Currently, no exchanges trade in the overnight session. Several exchanges have announced plans to trade in the overnight session. All exchange plans include a technical pause with no trading from 8:00pm to 9:00pm ET. The ATS venues currently operating overnight do not pause during this hour.

  4. The SIP - The Securities Information Processors (SIPs) are scheduled to start disseminating consolidated market data and NBBO in December 2026 which is a requirement for exchanges to start offering 23x5 trading.

  5. Order Protection Rule - There is no protected quote (Rule 611 of Regulation NMS) in the overnight session. This means that “trade throughs” can and do happen in the overnight session. If you are not utilizing a consolidated feed, you are not always getting your customers the best price available.

  6. Consolidated Feeds - There are multiple vendors offering consolidated “SIP-like” feeds for the overnight session including Exegy and dxFeed.

  7. Price Bands - All active venues operating in the overnight market establish a reference price per symbol and allow trading in a 20% price band around that reference price to protect against extreme volatility. There is no limit up / limit down functionality in the overnight market today.

  8. Fair Access - Some popular symbols (BMNU, ETHU, XXRP, BITU, KORU, YINN, YANG, and more) have been halted on competitor venues for regulatory reasons. All of these symbols are available for trading on Bruce ATS and we have not halted any symbols due to Fair Access restrictions to date.

  9. Corporate Actions - Symbols undergoing a material corporate action in the next day’s regular trading session are typically halted in the preceding overnight session. Overnight venues publish halt lists for each session.

  10. Smart Order Routers (SORs) - Smart order routers have entered the overnight ecosystem and offer a simplified retail broker execution experience with one stop access to all venues.

  11. Geopolitical Events - The Sunday night session is the first venue for equity market participants to react to weekend geopolitical shocks. Sunday sessions are often the most active because equity markets have been closed and price volatility has built up waiting for an outlet.

  12. Trade Date - The official “trade date” for all trades in the overnight session is the calendar date at the end of the session. The trade date will be the same despite trades occurring on two different calendar dates depending on execution time (before or after midnight ET). A trade on Sunday at 8:30pm ET is officially “trade date” Monday.

BRUCE ATS

  1. Retail Driven - At Bruce Markets we see retail driving our market in a way that is very different from the regular session. Last week in BOE-24 we shared research that estimated Retail is on at least one side of almost 75% of the shares traded on Bruce ATS. Furthermore, almost 23% of the time we estimate that shares traded on Bruce ATS are Retail to Retail.

  2. Queued Orders - Bruce ATS accepts and queues orders starting at 7:50pm ET every night there is an overnight trading session. Queued orders generate market data in real time and when trading begins at 8:00pm ET any crosses in the book will trade.

  3. Top 5 Bruce ATS Symbols YTD by Shares Traded - SOXS, BMNU, SOXL, SLV, and TQQQ.

  4. Top 5 Bruce ATS Symbols YTD by Notional Traded - TSLA, NVDA, MU, QQQ, and GLD.

  5. Message Traffic - Bruce has averaged ~55M messages a night in 2026!

  6. Immediate-or-Cancel (IOC) Orders - YTD, we have seen 38% of all shares traded on Bruce ATS come from IOC orders.

  7. Symbols - Bruce ATS has traded 5.5k distinct symbols so far in 2026 and we are averaging over 2.3k distinct symbols per night in April so far. We are also averaging orders in 8.5k symbols a night in April.

By The Numbers

Weekly Top 25 Symbols2

Top 25 Symbols

Overnight News

The Bruce Markets Team

1Data sources include internal and public sources, Finra Published Data, and client conversations. 2Top 25 data is from internal Bruce ATS sources through trade date 04/17/2026.