SEC Commissioner Peirce’s Six Questions on 24-Hour U.S. Stock Trading: Can Overnight Information Reach Investors in Time?

The United States may be moving toward a stock market that operates for approximately 23 hours a day, five days a week. The transition is already visible in extended-hours trading, clearing infrastructure, market-data distribution, and the growing demand for access from investors outside the United States.

At a September 17 roundtable, SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce highlighted both the momentum behind longer trading sessions and the unresolved risks surrounding them. Her remarks raised an important question: if the market remains open while corporate headquarters, regulators, and much of the financial system are asleep, can critical information still reach investors quickly and fairly?

For the crypto industry, this debate is especially relevant. Digital asset markets have operated continuously for years, but their experience demonstrates that “always open” does not automatically mean liquid, efficient, or safe. The future of 24-hour stock trading may depend on lessons that decentralized networks, stablecoins, tokenized securities, and crypto market infrastructure have already begun to reveal.

The U.S. Stock Market Is Moving Beyond the Traditional Trading Day

Extended-hours trading is not entirely new. Certain alternative trading systems have offered it for years, but activity outside regular U.S. equity hours has remained a very small share of total trading in national market system stocks. It has also tended to concentrate in a limited number of highly recognizable companies.

That situation is beginning to change. New market entrants and established exchanges are expanding operating windows in response to international investors, retail demand, algorithmic strategies, and the increasingly global nature of capital markets.

Several infrastructure changes are helping make longer sessions possible:

• The National Securities Clearing Corporation has moved toward a continuous five-day clearing schedule, beginning Sunday evening and continuing through Friday evening.
• The SEC has approved longer operating hours for the securities information processor, with the revised schedule expected to begin on December 6 under the timetable discussed at the roundtable.
• Regulators have approved a market-wide limit-up and limit-down framework for extended sessions.
• Trading venues are developing procedures for handling corporate actions outside the traditional market calendar.

These adjustments are necessary, but they do not eliminate the underlying challenges. A market can be technically available while still being difficult or expensive to trade.

The SEC’s official resources on market structure and trading operations provide additional context on how U.S. securities markets are organized and supervised.

What Crypto Markets Reveal About 24/7 Trading

Crypto markets provide the most visible example of continuous trading. Bitcoin, ether, stablecoins, and thousands of other digital assets can be traded at any time, including weekends and public holidays.

This model offers clear advantages. Information can be reflected in prices without waiting for the next opening bell. Investors in different time zones do not need to coordinate around one national trading session. On-chain settlement can also reduce the dependency on certain batch-processing windows.

However, the crypto experience exposes several problems that traditional markets must consider carefully.

Continuous access does not guarantee deep liquidity

Liquidity in digital asset markets varies significantly by asset, venue, time zone, and market condition. Major trading pairs may remain active around the clock, while smaller tokens can experience wide spreads and sharp price gaps during low-volume periods.

The same pattern could emerge in overnight equity trading. If participation is concentrated in a small number of securities, an open market may still have a thin order book. Investors could face greater market impact, wider spreads, and more frequent price dislocations.

Fragmentation creates execution challenges

Crypto liquidity is spread across centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, market makers, prime brokers, and over-the-counter channels. Prices may differ between venues, and the best executable price can change rapidly.

A longer U.S. stock-trading window may produce similar fragmentation across exchanges, alternative trading systems, and private liquidity pools. This raises questions about how brokers should evaluate best execution when prices, depth, and transaction costs vary significantly between venues.

“Always on” increases the importance of operational resilience

A 24/7 network cannot rely on long maintenance windows. Upgrades, outages, oracle failures, cyberattacks, and congestion may occur during periods when fewer engineers or compliance personnel are available.

Blockchain protocols respond with a combination of distributed infrastructure, automated monitoring, emergency procedures, and community coordination. These tools are not a complete solution, but they show that continuous markets require a different approach to incident response than systems built around overnight shutdowns.

The BIS work on tokenization and the future of financial market infrastructure similarly emphasizes that new settlement models can improve efficiency while introducing new operational and governance requirements.

Peirce’s Six Questions—and Why They Matter to Crypto

Commissioner Peirce’s remarks can be understood through six central questions. Each one has a direct parallel in the digital asset sector.

1. What can continuous markets teach U.S. equities about liquidity and manipulation?

Foreign exchange markets, crypto markets, and derivatives markets already operate across multiple time zones. Their experience suggests that market quality depends on more than opening hours.

Key factors include:

• The number and diversity of active participants
• The quality of market-making incentives
• The availability of transparent market data
• The resilience of matching and settlement systems
• The ability to detect manipulation across venues
• The effectiveness of circuit breakers and trading halts

Crypto markets have shown that continuous trading can make price discovery more responsive, but they have also demonstrated how low-liquidity periods can amplify volatility. Wash trading, spoofing, coordinated social-media campaigns, and liquidity withdrawal can all become more damaging when order books are thin.

For U.S. equities, surveillance systems may need to monitor activity across a longer time horizon and coordinate information between venues. A suspicious trading pattern that begins during the overnight session cannot be treated as an isolated event simply because regular trading has not yet started.

2. How should brokers meet best-execution obligations overnight?

During the regular session, brokers generally have access to deeper liquidity and more consistent price formation. Outside those hours, the market may be more fragmented and spreads may be wider.

This creates a practical dilemma. A broker could route an order immediately to an available venue, but the execution price may be unfavorable. Alternatively, the broker could delay execution in search of better liquidity, but the delay may expose the client to price movement.

Crypto trading offers several possible reference points:

• Smart order routing across multiple venues
• Explicit disclosure of spread and slippage
• Price bands based on independent reference markets
• Liquidity-aware order types
• Automated risk controls during low-volume periods

These tools may help, but equity brokers operate under a different regulatory framework and cannot simply replicate crypto-market practices. The SEC’s investor guidance on extended-hours trading highlights the importance of understanding reduced liquidity, wider spreads, and higher volatility outside regular sessions.

3. Can asset managers decline to trade overnight and still satisfy their fiduciary duties?

Institutional investors may decide that avoiding overnight trading is prudent when execution costs and market risks are unfavorable. That decision could be reasonable, particularly for long-term portfolios that do not require immediate execution.

The challenge is consistency. If a manager systematically refuses to trade during certain hours, could that decision prevent clients from responding to material events? Conversely, if a manager trades overnight simply because access is available, could it create unnecessary costs?

Digital asset funds face a similar issue. A portfolio may have access to continuous liquidity but still impose internal trading windows, approval requirements, or risk limits. The existence of a 24-hour market does not require every participant to trade continuously.

A sound fiduciary framework may need to distinguish between:

• The ability to trade
• The obligation to monitor
• The obligation to respond
• The cost of executing at a particular time
• The potential harm caused by waiting

The answer will likely depend on the investment mandate, client expectations, asset liquidity, and documented risk-management policies.

4. Should issuers change when they publish material information?

Traditional U.S. market practice has generally concentrated filings, earnings releases, and corporate announcements around the regular trading session. That convention becomes harder to maintain when investors can trade throughout the night.

The problem is particularly clear with EDGAR. As described in the discussion, filings submitted after 5:30 p.m. may not be processed until the following business day. In a market that continues operating overnight, a delay in processing or distributing issuer information could create an information imbalance.

This issue has an important parallel in crypto. Token issuers, decentralized protocols, and stablecoin operators may publish governance proposals, security disclosures, reserve updates, or incident notices at any hour. When a protocol remains active, the market may react before users have had time to understand the announcement.

For tokenized securities, the stakes could be even higher. A security token may trade continuously on a blockchain-based venue, while its legally significant disclosures, transfer restrictions, or corporate actions still depend on systems designed for business hours.

The SEC’s EDGAR filing hours and submission guidance illustrates the gap between continuous market access and conventional regulatory workflows. Any move toward longer trading should consider whether material information can be distributed with comparable speed and reliability.

5. Can overnight corporate actions be processed accurately?

Dividends, tender offers, stock splits, mergers, voting events, and other corporate actions require coordination across issuers, registrars, brokers, clearing agencies, and data providers.

If trading continues while an important corporate action is being prepared or processed, participants may receive inconsistent information. Errors could become more difficult to correct when they occur outside standard support hours.

Blockchain systems may eventually help with certain aspects of corporate actions through programmable settlement and shared records. Smart contracts can automate eligibility calculations, distributions, and transfer restrictions. Yet automation does not remove the need for accurate legal instructions, reliable identity data, governance processes, and mechanisms for correcting mistakes.

Tokenization therefore should not be treated as a simple replacement for existing infrastructure. It is better understood as a redesign of how ownership, compliance, settlement, and corporate events interact.

6. Should regulators provide relief for smaller issuers?

Longer trading hours could impose a disproportionate burden on smaller public companies. Large issuers may have global investor-relations teams, security operations centers, legal staff, and communications infrastructure capable of operating around the clock. Smaller companies may not.

A regulatory framework that expects every issuer to monitor markets continuously, respond immediately to rumors, and publish information at any hour could raise compliance costs and discourage companies from accessing public markets.

The SEC may therefore need to consider targeted guidance, safe harbors, or other forms of relief. Possible approaches could include:

• Clear rules for urgent overnight disclosures
• Standardized procedures for correcting market rumors
• Defined expectations for issuer monitoring
• Centralized emergency communication channels
• Proportionate requirements based on issuer size and market capitalization

The crypto sector faces an analogous challenge. A decentralized protocol may operate continuously, but its core developers and security teams cannot. Projects increasingly rely on incident-response playbooks, multisignature controls, staged upgrades, and transparent disclosure policies to manage this mismatch.

The Human Factor: Markets Do Not Sleep, but People Do

One of the most difficult problems is not technological. It is human.

A system that operates from Sunday evening through Friday evening compresses maintenance, reconciliation, compliance review, and operational support into short windows. If the market is effectively always open, an IT outage at 3 a.m., a faulty data feed, or a viral rumor can influence prices before decision-makers at the issuer or regulator have assembled the facts.

Crypto markets have repeatedly shown how quickly online narratives can affect prices. A misleading post, an exploit rumor, or a temporary stablecoin deviation may trigger liquidations within minutes. The speed of blockchain settlement can intensify the consequences because collateral may be repriced or liquidated automatically.

Traditional markets may need stronger mechanisms for:

• Verifying emergency information
• Distinguishing official announcements from rumors
• Pausing trading when data quality is compromised
• Coordinating responses across multiple venues
• Escalating incidents when key personnel are unavailable

A 24-hour market is therefore also a 24-hour cybersecurity and communications environment.

What 24-Hour Trading Could Mean for Tokenized Assets

The debate arrives as financial institutions explore tokenized funds, stablecoin settlement, and blockchain-based representations of real-world assets.

If tokenized Treasury funds or equities become more widely available, investors may expect the underlying assets and trading venues to share similar operating hours. A token that can be transferred at any moment may create pressure for the related fund administrator, broker, custodian, and settlement system to support continuous service as well.

This does not mean every financial product must become permanently tradable. Some tokenized products may use permissioned windows, scheduled settlement, or transfer restrictions. The design choice should reflect the asset’s liquidity, legal structure, investor base, and operational capacity.

The key lesson from crypto is that market hours are only one part of the system. Continuous availability must be matched by:

• Reliable price oracles
• Strong custody controls
• Transparent reserve and collateral data
• Clear governance rules
• Adequate liquidity
• Robust transaction monitoring
• Well-tested recovery procedures

The Financial Stability Board’s recommendations for global stablecoin arrangements offer a useful regulatory reference point for considering how continuous digital-asset activity can be supervised across jurisdictions.

The Real Question Is Not Whether Markets Should Stay Open

The transition toward longer U.S. stock-trading hours may be difficult to reverse. Global investors want greater access, technology makes continuous connectivity easier, and digital assets have normalized the idea that markets do not need to close every evening.

But the central policy question is not simply whether the market should be open. It is whether the entire market ecosystem—including information distribution, liquidity provision, clearing, custody, corporate actions, cybersecurity, and investor protection—can operate to the same standard around the clock.

Crypto markets provide both an example and a warning. They demonstrate the convenience of continuous access, but they also show how fragmented liquidity, automated liquidations, operational failures, and information asymmetry can become more severe outside peak trading hours.

For the SEC, the next stage of market modernization will require more than extending the clock. It will require designing a system in which overnight investors are not operating with delayed information, weaker safeguards, or materially different execution quality.

For investors participating in digital assets and tokenized markets, the same principle applies at the wallet level. When transactions can occur at any time, controlling private keys and verifying every signing request become essential parts of risk management. A hardware wallet such as OneKey can help keep private keys offline while allowing users to review and authorize transactions through a dedicated device. That security model is particularly relevant in a 24/7 environment, where phishing attempts, malicious approvals, and market-moving events do not follow office hours.

The future of finance may operate continuously. The real test will be whether its protections, information systems, and accountability mechanisms can keep pace.