I'm extremely skeptical about this.
24/7 trading will definitely burn a lot of extra energy in datacenters, make some speculators a little richer, and make a LOT of retail investors nervous…
But what actual real-world problem will it solve?
I for one am skeptical that more liquidity is always good. I think that having achieved $0.01 spreads, we're well-past the point of diminishing returns with high-frequency trading.
Right? Why do we even need all-day trading?
I have seen a once-daily auction proposed, which seems like a sensible approach to me.
That wouldn't be enough liquidity, and also wouldn't solve the problem if the auction happened at a specific time. Day traders would all put in their bid at the last possible moment.
What solves the day trading problem is doing chunked actions at random small intervals (like between 2-7 seconds). Then you can't put your bid in at the last moment because you won't know when it is. So your best bet is to put in your bid when you've chosen a price, knowing that it will resolve within seven seconds or less.
I do see your point regarding timing, but I don't see why daily isn't enough liquidity when, for decades, funds from trades have taken multiple days to clear.
The very existence of holiday weekends shows that it's actually totally fine if you go 72 hours without any trades resolving.
There are whole books on this, but the short summary is that there are infinite times when information can change that would affect the value of a company. Anything less than infinite trading is a compromise where the price is no longer reflective of the value. The bigger the gap in the time, the bigger the gap between price and value.
For example, if you could only trade once a day, let's say a company announces midday that some huge customer has just left their platform. Their price should drop, but without trading it can't. So now everyone knows that their value is lower, but can't do anything about it. So people who own that stock will hold their money and not make other trades, because they know they are going to lose a bunch when trading happens again.
> The very existence of holiday weekends shows that it's actually totally fine if you go 72 hours without any trades resolving.
Trading never stops. There is an entire secondary market that has after hours/weekend trading, and a tertiary private market when that one isn't open. It's just you (and all the other retail traders) who can't trade.
Which if anything proves the opposite of your point. Liquidity is so important that wealthy people set up an entire system to keep trading just so they can still have it.
> But what actual real-world problem will it solve?
I know most Americans don't travel, but are you aware that timezones exist and there's an entire world outside the US that also invests in US companies?
Why do you think global companies want to list in US capital markets instead of their own? Being the world's most desirable capital markets is a massive boon for the US economy and 24/7 trading will only accelerate this trend.
> I know most Americans don't travel, but are you aware that timezones exist and there's an entire world outside the US that also invests in US companies?
Not only am I dimly aware of the existence of these not-the-US places, but I actually live in not-the-US.
I believe I'm dimly aware of the concept of a timezone too, yeah. https://bugs.python.org/issue35829#msg385309
> Being the world's most desirable capital markets is a massive boon for the US economy and 24/7 trading will only accelerate this trend.
So, no downsides or diminishing returns to offering 24/7 trading?
>But what actual real-world problem will it solve?
Having US markets open during the rest of the world's business day.
Okay, what problem does that solve?