For years, after-hours trading has been a shadowy corner of the markets where thin liquidity and wide spreads can amplify price moves — and, some allege, open the door to opportunistic behavior by intermediaries. Now, as the NYSE, Nasdaq, CME and Cboe race to extend trading beyond traditional hours, 24/7 markets promise to reshape who benefits — and who loses.
Why traders stand to gain
Mati Greenspan, CEO of Quantum Economics, tells CoinDesk the shift is straightforward: retail and institutional traders will be the primary beneficiaries. “The biggest losers in 24/7 stock trading won’t be traders: they’ll be the middlemen who’ve long made money when traders can’t trade,” he said. Greenspan argues that when markets reopen after a closure, a small group of firms can effectively set the first tradable prices — sometimes choosing levels that trigger client stop losses and close positions at a loss, he alleges. “They basically get to control prices, often with hours to strategize…often hunting stop losses,” he said bluntly, calling it “manipulation outright.”
How after-hours conditions enable it
Market structure helps explain the concern. After the 4 p.m. ET closing bell, liquidity evaporates: order books thin, spreads widen and a few large orders can move prices farther than they would during the core session. “People have gone home and the liquidity is not there, so you’re going to see larger spreads,” says Joe Dente, a floor broker at the NYSE. That sparse environment makes price discovery slower and less efficient — a conclusion backed by an influential UC Berkeley–University of Rochester study that found after-hours price discovery is “much less efficient” due to lower volume and thinner liquidity.
Academic and industry research also documents tactics that can distort opening prices. An SSRN paper on opening-price manipulation shows how submitting and canceling large pre-open orders can temporarily push prices away from fundamentals until broader liquidity returns, leaving investors who bought at inflated opens with losses. Brokers and market participants who spoke on background and academic findings collectively suggest that thin sessions — and gaps between trading periods — have historically made coordinated routing and execution easier.
Regulatory action and enforcement
Regulators have taken note. In late 2025 the SEC settled charges involving a multi-year spoofing scheme that targeted thinly traded securities, and Velox Clearing was fined $1.3 million for failing to detect layering and spoofing. FINRA’s 2026 oversight report also cited firms for poorly designed supervisory systems and controls around after-hours trading and for failing to identify potentially manipulative activity.
Would 24/7 trading cure the problem?
Proponents say round-the-clock trading removes the vacuum that creates those opportunities. If markets never close, there’s no long gap for liquidity to dry up or for a small set of market-makers to set the first post-event price. That should reduce the chance that intermediaries can coordinate around routing and execution to the disadvantage of inactive traders.
But full 24/7 trading also raises new questions. Electronic markets favor speed: the fastest algorithms and best infrastructure can reactionarily capitalize on news and order flow in nanoseconds, a structural edge that’s difficult for human traders to match. “There’s always an edge for whoever has the fastest computers and the best program writers,” Dente notes. Nasdaq quantitative head Pranav Ramesh warns that thin markets can magnify risks tied to routing and execution when retail flow concentrates at a few wholesalers, and that scrutiny outside regular hours can be harder because there are fewer benchmark reference points.
Real-world traction and alternatives
Some on-chain venues already show appetite for continuous trading. Decentralized exchange Hyperliquid — which operates 24/7 on blockchain rails — saw traders flock to trade traditional assets like oil and gold when centralized exchanges were closed. The platform’s weekly derivatives trading volume topped $50 billion at one point, and it generated $1.6 million in revenue over a 24-hour period — figures the article notes outpaced the Bitcoin blockchain’s revenue during that same window. Hyperliquid has also launched an S&P 500 perpetual contract, signaling demand for non-stop access to traditional market exposures.
What exchanges are doing
Major U.S. exchanges are actively pursuing extended hours. The NYSE has sought SEC approval for 24/7 trading; Nasdaq announced similar plans in December. CME is planning 24-hour crypto futures in 2026, pending approval, and Cboe has already expanded U.S. index options to 24/5 trading. Exchanges themselves would likely benefit from added trading fees if around-the-clock markets take off.
Bottom line
Whether 24/7 markets will definitively curb alleged broker manipulation remains to be proven, but the trend is clear: always-on markets would give traders — especially retail participants who today can’t act when markets are closed — the ability to respond to news in real time rather than being forced to accept the opening price set after a pause. As Greenspan put it, “Traders can react in real time without being at the mercy of the middlemen — the brokers.” Regulators, exchanges and market participants will now be watching closely to see whether constant trading widens access and fairness or simply shifts the advantage to a new class of speed-focused players.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
