If the closing bell has lengthy been a enterprise mannequin, then 24/7 buying and selling is an try to interrupt it. As the NYSE, Nasdaq, CME and Cboe race to introduce round the clock buying and selling, the query is who stands to realize and who might lose.
The reply is kind of easy, Mati Greenspan, CEO and founding father of Quantum Economics, informed CoinDesk: “The biggest losers in 24/7 stock trading won’t be traders: they’ll benefit massively. It’ll be the middlemen who’ve long made money when traders can’t trade.”
Greenspan, additionally a market analyst, alleged that when markets reopen after what he known as a giant occasion, “a handful of firms decide the first tradable price. Oftentimes, they will explicitly use a price that triggers stop losses for their clients, closing them out at a loss and making a profit for the broker who is essentially trading against the client.”
When Greenspan was requested whether or not brokers coordinate round pricing throughout market closures, he was blunt in his declare: “Yes, manipulation outright.”
“They mainly get to manage costs, typically with hours to strategize,” he said. “Often hunting stops losses. When big news happens on weekends, the house tends to take liberties with pricing at the opening bell.”
His comments come as several major U.S. exchanges are looking to offer around-the-clock trading services. The NYSE said it is searching for SEC approval for 24/7 buying and selling. Nasdaq announced similar plans in December. CME plans to roll out 24-hour crypto futures in 2026, pending approval, and Cboe recently expanded U.S. index choices to 24/5 buying and selling.
‘Plausible deniability’
While Greenspan’s comments could be seen as accusatory, it’s not hard to see why such practices could be prominent in the after-hours market. When the usual trading hours come to a close, at 4 p.m. ET, the thin liquidity can make prices easier to influence.
“After the 4 p.m. closing bell, you simply don’t have the same liquidity,” said Joe Dente, a floor broker at the New York Stock Exchange. “People have gone home and the liquidity is not there, so you’re going to see larger spreads.”
Wider spreads and thinner order books, he said, create an environment where price movements can be exaggerated compared with the regular session.
Academic research also supports the view that extended trading sessions are structurally different from core market hours. A widely cited joint UC Berkeley–University of Rochester study found that after-hours price discovery is “much less efficient,” citing lower volume and thinner liquidity that limit the speed at which information is incorporated into prices.
When asked whether manipulation already occurs during those periods, Dente said it is “possible,” but he also pointed out that “the event of 24-hour trading is going to leave things open to manipulation,” referring to situations already seen in after-hours markets
Greenspan, in the meantime, famous that these alleged manipulation practices are “not precisely above board, so that they [brokers who might be taking part in such actions] have a tendency to take care of believable deniability.”
This is the place the road between precise manipulation and proof that such practises happen begins to blur.
A widely cited SSRN study on opening value manipulation exhibits how brokers can affect costs throughout the pre-open public sale by submitting and canceling giant orders, quickly pushing shares away from their elementary worth earlier than broader liquidity returns.
The analysis discovered that such manipulation can create distorted opening costs which can be later corrected as soon as the complete market begins buying and selling, leaving buyers who purchased on the inflated value with losses. Because these distortions happen earlier than regular buying and selling quantity returns, the ensuing value strikes can seem indistinguishable from peculiar market volatility.
Still one other dealer, accustomed to in a single day buying and selling practices and who requested to not be named as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly, stated skinny in a single day liquidity can sometimes make it simpler for coordinated methods to affect costs in much less broadly traded shares.
And this isn’t simply anecdotal proof.
In late 2025, the SEC settled charges over a multi-year spoofing scheme involving misleading orders used to maneuver costs in thinly traded securities. Regulators additionally fined Velox Clearing $1.3 million for failing to detect “layering” and “spoofing” in risky shares.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), in its 2026 Annual Regulatory Oversight Report, cited companies for “failing to maintain reasonably designed supervisory systems and controls, including with respect to the identification and reporting of potentially manipulative activity conducted in after-hours trading.”
A win for retail?
Whether it is exhausting to level out how widespread these accusations are, one factor is for certain: if buying and selling goes 24/7, merchants will be the last word winners, notably retail merchants.
In as we speak’s digital markets, merchants who reply quickest to market information have a structural benefit.
“There’s always an edge for whoever has the fastest computers and the best program writers,” stated Dente, noting that algorithms can react to information and orders “in a nanosecond.” For particular person buyers, he added, maintaining with that pace is troublesome. “How does the human person keep up with that?”
And reacting to those occasions turns into even tougher for smaller buyers when the market is closed, leaving these retail or smaller merchants at an enormous drawback.
Pranav Ramesh, head of quantitative analysis for choices at Nasdaq and co-founder of Leadpoet, stated skinny markets can amplify these dangers.
“Broker coordination may often show up as industry-wide alignment around routing and execution practices, especially where a large share of retail flow ends up with a small number of wholesalers,” he stated. “Outside regular hours, scrutiny can be harder because the market is thinner and there are fewer straightforward reference points for investors to benchmark execution quality,” Ramesh stated in his private capability.
Sources accustomed to dealer routing and liquidity practices informed CoinDesk that price-setting energy in skinny periods is actual, notably when main information breaks whereas markets are closed. According to these sources, coordination round routing, spreads and execution practices throughout prolonged gaps has traditionally been simpler exactly as a result of retail merchants can not take part.
This is exactly what around-the-clock buying and selling will remedy for merchants, in response to Greenspan, who stated 24/7 markets would blunt fintech companies’ benefit by eradicating the weekend vacuum completely.
The current Middle East battle has been an ideal instance of how this could open up extra buying and selling alternatives when markets stay closed. Decentralized alternate, Hyperliquid, which trades on blockchain 24/7, has seen rising curiosity from merchants betting on conventional monetary belongings, together with oil and gold, throughout the weekend, when conventional exchanges are closed.
It has grow to be so fashionable that weekly derivatives buying and selling quantity on the platform topped $50 billion, whereas it generated $1.6 million in income over 24 hours, outpacing all the Bitcoin blockchain’s income. The platform has additionally not too long ago added an S&P 500 perpetual contract.
Needless to say, main exchanges will additionally possible profit from buying and selling charges in the event that they open for 24/7 buying and selling.
Whether round the clock buying and selling in the end weakens brokers’ affect on value setting stays to be seen. What is obvious is that exchanges and buyers stand to realize from markets that by no means shut.
“Traders can react in real time without being at the mercy of the middlemen — the brokers,” stated Greenspan.
Read extra: Bitcoin’s weekend selloff may be over with CME’s 24/7 crypto trading move
