Among other things, the paper notes that extended trading hours can negatively impact liquidity, leading to wider spreads in overnight trading.
Additionally, it boosts the demand for market surveillance and trading controls.
“Market controls like circuit breakers, kill switches and pre-trade controls must operate continuously with senior oversight and escalation protocols,” it said.
Additionally, market participants need to build systems that can handle 24/7 data feeds and post-trade processing, ensure adequate supervision, and to deal with the risks of trading during periods of low liquidity. They also need mechanisms for funding and settling trades outside of normal hours for banking and payments systems.
Extended trading hours also creates potential complications when it comes to calculating benchmarks, clearing, settlement, margining and certain corporate actions, such as setting dividends. Possible solutions to some of these issues include adopting a “virtual close”, or short market closures, it noted.
Ultimately, the paper concludes that “Extended trading is not inevitable nor universally desirable.”
For markets with the genuine demand for extended trading hours, the option of providing 22 or 23 hours of trading five days a week offers a more realistic alternative to true 24/7 trading, which would require “a system-wide transformation,” the paper said. “It requires the re-engineering of post-trade processes, governance frameworks and supervisory oversight.”
“This paper is not a prescription for 24/7 markets, but a blueprint for how to get there if markets choose to,” said Nandini Sukumar, CEO of the WFE, in a release.
“The shift to extended trading is technologically feasible and already aligned with investor behaviour in other asset classes. The real question is how markets evolve in a way that protects investors, supports integrity, and strengthens global competitiveness. Any shift must be ecosystem-wide, coordinated across custodians, settlement banks, brokers and regulators,” she added.