US equities are expected to move to a 23-hour, five-day trading week, with December 6 as the target date. For Korean investors the new hours bring access, but also the risk of thin liquidity.
According to the Chosun Ilbo and EBN News, trading hours in the US securities market will extend to about 23 hours a day from December, with December 6 as the target start date. The Securities and Exchange Commission approved the consolidated tape (SIP) to handle 23 hours of data a day, which laid the institutional groundwork. Reports noted that some sessions remain subject to SEC approval and other conditions.
광고 문의 · 300×250The new element is an overnight session. Exchange operator 24X plans to open a session from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. New York time, five days a week. With a 14-hour gap between New York and Seoul in December, that works out to roughly 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Korean time. This is our conversion using the time difference, not a figure stated in the reports. Regular exchanges such as Nasdaq, NYSE Arca and Cboe EDGX are also reported to be joining overnight trading.
Familiar Daytime Trading, a Different Route
Korean brokerages already offer US stock trading from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Korean time, and alternative trading systems (ATS) such as Blue Ocean have been at the center of that window. The reports say Korean investors account for about 35 percent of Blue Ocean's volume. The hours themselves are not new to investors, but if regular exchanges take part overnight, reliance on any single ATS outage or liquidity shortfall could ease, which is the reports' view.
Last month, price feeds for some leveraged ETFs were interrupted during Korean daytime hours, inconveniencing local investors. The Korea Exchange also opened an after-market running until 8 p.m. last month and said it is preparing a 24-hour system in stages. Korean rules are, in effect, keeping pace as major markets compete on trading hours.
Thin Liquidity and Wider Spreads
The risks are clear too. Overnight trading made up only about 1 percent of total US equity volume in the second quarter this year, but it grew 358 percent from a year earlier, the reports said. In a small market, few participants mean wider bid-ask spreads and higher execution costs for large orders. Blue Ocean's chief executive noted that asset managers and investment banks have yet to join the overnight market in force, and whether they do is seen as the variable that will decide the new system's success.
The Chosun headline's point that day and night strategies must differ reflects the same issue: regular and overnight sessions differ in liquidity and price formation, so even the same stock cannot be approached the same way. This newspaper does not recommend any stock or trading direction; it reports only that longer hours widen access and do not guarantee returns.
Time remains before the start, and details may change with the approval process and operators' readiness. Brokerage-specific hours and fee schedules should be checked against official notices. For investors, confirming order types, executable hours and the scope of price quotes in advance comes first.