The traditional 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. stock market trading hours—complete with opening and closing bells that have been around since the 1870s—are becoming as obsolete as the headphones still used on the NYSE floor. Wall Street is racing to catch up with the “always-on” spirit of cryptocurrency and prediction markets and cater to a new generation of retail investors Capital to trading anytime, anywhere.
Major U.S. exchanges, including the NYSE and Nasdaq, are pushing to expand trading hours to 22 and even 24 hours a day, with some platforms expected to launch before the end of the year. The shift—fueled by soaring retail investor participation, which now accounts for at least 20% of daily volume , and global demand for trillions of dollars in U.S. stocks—is XEM as the biggest overhaul of market structure since electronic trading replaced floor trading.
But the move to 24/7 markets— which platforms like Robinhood and Charles Schwab have already implemented through “dark pools” and alternative trading systems—raises important questions: price volatility, the potential for market manipulation, and whether turning stocks into a casino that never closes will benefit retail investors, or simply open up more opportunities for them to lose money.
Americans are trading as if everything is a gamble.
The trend toward 24/7 market openness reflects a fundamental shift in the way Americans interact with financial markets: Everything is becoming a betting opportunity.
Polymarket has turned the presidential election into a multi-billion dollar “betting pool” where users place real-time bets on the outcome. People today are always online, scrolling X, diving into their favorite subreddits, XEM every news story, every financial report, every geopolitical move as a chance to change their lives.
It’s a behavior Wall Street is addicted to. Blue Ocean Technologies—which runs overnight trading for multiple brokers—recorded $3.3 billion in overnight trading the day after Election Day last November, triple its Medium $1 billion. For Robinhood, its sixth-busiest overnight trading session in history came after Nvidia’s earnings report.
And those traders aren’t professionals. They’re people in pajamas, making huge bets based on breaking news, meme , and sentiment.
When stocks follow crypto: 24/7, no sleep, always volatile
The traditional trading day pales in comparison to crypto trading 24/7, forex never sleeping, and US Treasury bonds trading overnight. Polymarket and other prediction platforms demonstrate that the appetite for “all-time participation” is Dip. If you can bet on whether Trump will post before 12 noon, why can’t you trade Tesla stock at 3 am?
But the vision of an always-open market also has dystopian undertones. The current after-hours trading has exposed clear dangers:
Liquidation disappears when most investors sleep
Widening spread
Prices fluctuate widely due to low volume
The fair price protection mechanism (NBBO) does not apply overtime.
And these aren’t “system bugs.” They’re the preserve of professional players—institutions that know how to exploit the darkness of the market. “Dark pools” are so-called because trades are only made public after they’re completed, allowing big players to maneuver without causing market volatility. Now, individual investors are being invited into those dark waters, armed with nothing more than a smartphone and a Chain , rather than a Bloomberg Terminal or a risk management system.
And their money… is often their rent.
24-hour trading: more volatility, less efficiency
Some economists worry that 24/7 trading could lead to less accurate prices and lower profits. The current concentration of volume around the open and close—because everyone trades then—suggests that spreading trading out over 24 hours could create 24 hours of price inefficiency .
The revolution has begun
The SEC approved the 24X National Exchange—a platform specifically designed for trading 23 hours a day. Meanwhile, brokers continued to expand:
Webull opens overnight trading for US users
Firstrade is preparing to launch a 24/7 version next year
Foreign ownership of US stocks has nearly doubled since 2019, and investors from Tokyo to London want to trade during their “waking hours.”
Polymarket is a shining example of the future of financial markets. It has risen from an obscure election betting platform to a billion-dollar trading machine in a short period of time — and its rise reveals an uncomfortable reality.
Today, most of us no longer invest in the traditional sense.
We don't even really trade anymore.
We're turning everything into a gamble — and Wall Street is doing everything it can to make sure that “casino” operates 24/7, with the lights never turning off.
