SEC Taps Blackrock, Robinhood, NYSE and More for 24-Hour Trading Push

A Roundtable With Wall Street’s Biggest Names

The SEC announced this week that it will hold a roundtable on Sept. 17 to work through what it will actually take to run U.S. equity markets around the clock. The event, set for the agency’s Washington headquarters from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET, is open to the public and will stream live on the SEC’s website.

The panelist list reads like a who’s who of market infrastructure, including Citi, UBS, Cboe, NYSE, DTCC, Invesco, Nasdaq, Charles Schwab, Samsung, Blackrock, Robinhood, Jane Street, State Street, BNP Paribas, BNY Pershing, Citadel Securities and Interactive Brokers.

What’s on the Table

The agenda, per the SEC, is set to focus on the unglamorous but critical mechanics of nonstop trading, including aspects such as:

• Exchange and broker-dealer operational readiness
• Surveillance capabilities for overnight sessions when far fewer people are watching the tape
• Clearance and settlement systems that have to function through hours markets have never traded before

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins noted in a recent appearance that the entire development comes as part of a push to modernize the structure of U.S. equity markets, and a roundtable this heavily staffed with exchanges, clearinghouses and market makers signals the agency wants operational buy-in before it writes any new rules, not after.

The Market Is Already Moving Without the SEC

While the effort forges ahead, it bears mentioning that parts of Wall Street are already building toward round-the-clock trading regardless of how the discussion goes. Nasdaq, for instance, has already targeted Dec. 6 for a new overnight session, aiming for a trading day that stretches close to 23 hours pending final regulatory sign-off.

Similarly, 24 Exchange, which is backed by Steve Cohen’s Point72 Ventures, has already won SEC approval to run a stock exchange with roughly 23 hours of trading five days a week. NYSE, for its part, floated its own extended-hours model in 2024, an idea its executives said was shaped partly by watching how bitcoin and crypto markets simply never close.

Last year, Citadel Securities sent the SEC a lengthy 29-page letter pushing for clear rules and stronger infrastructure before extended hours roll out broadly, a sign that even firms eager for more trading time want the plumbing sorted first.

Things, however, feel a little more serious this time, and the stakes for getting this right are high. Analysts see the Sept. 17 session as the agency trying to catch up to a shift the market has already decided is coming, and the panelist list (consisting of the who’s who of traditional finance) suggests the SEC would rather borrow Wall Street’s own expertise than dictate the rules from the outside.