By Suzanne McGee
(Reuters) – Online brokerage Firstrade plans to launch overnight trading in early 2025, the latest firm looking to offer retail clients the chance to trade US stocks and exchange-traded funds outside of regular hours.
U.S. investors have driven around-the-clock trading volume sharply higher during recent events like the U.S. presidential election and the market selloff in early August.
Charles Schwab in October announced an expansion of the list of securities its clients can trade overnight, while rival brokerage firm Webull also announced the debut of its own new overnight trading session that month.
Firstrade announced the planned launch in a statement released on Wednesday. Trading will be offered on some 500 securities, 20 hours a day, five days a week, the firm said.
“Sophisticated investors have always possessed the ability to access markets when they wanted, and the retail clients have increasingly been asking, ‘well, what about me?'” Steven Callahan, trading behavior specialist at New York-based Firstrade, said.
The growing popularity of overnight trading was on display on election night, with volumes on Robinhood Markets hitting a record of about 11 times the level typically traded during an overnight session.
The New York Stock Exchange, a division of Intercontinental Exchange, last month said it plans to seek regulatory approval to extend trading to 22 hours on business days.
Anthony Denier, group president and U.S. CEO of WeBull, believes the explosion of interest in overnight trading is the latest innovation in the retail trading universe that will rapidly become mainstream.
“More and more of our younger clients grew up with trading crypto products, which don’t recognize holidays or weekends,” Denier said. “So, like commission-free trading and fractional trading, this is going to be another product that first feels disruptive but will be commonplace.”
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee; Editing by Anna Driver)
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