There would be no action overnight, there would be no market. Overnight futures markets are made in asia/europe, like someone mentioned there's no reason they would risk making a market in some little U.S. company overnight
It was only the overleveraged longs that lost money...the shorts made money, the longs that held just bought more at the bottom and they made money....remember the stock market is a zero sum game. You keep those markets open 24 hours and it will just take traders 3 times as long to make any money. And i dont know about you, but i like to be done trading within 2 hours of market open to have the rest of the day free. As fun as trading is, i dont want to be stuck in front of a computer all day and night with no life...whats the point of making money if your too busy in front of your computer to go out and spend it?
its going to happen sooner then later.ARCA is opening up at 4 am soon and every other exchange will follow.
INCA was open all night and got very little activity. I expect ARCA is currently the same. Most US-stock-affecting news happens 06:00-19:00 ET at the outside. Having said that, though, I must admit to doing a trade at 06:51 this morning (on ARCA) I'd like to see the trading day get a little shorter - maybe 1 hour less at each end of the extended hours, which are generally very slow times. Most pros would probably be happier to have an hour taken out of the middle of RTH too. It's interesting that the NYSE has been getting Pisani to leak the idea of an earlier opening. I wonder what the response has been.
24 hour trading would be great in the big names like cisco and microsoft but small cap/float stocks would be open to all sorts of manipulation that would be detrimental to the long term health of the capital markets. If any one really wants to trade 24 hours a day there is plenty of opportunity in other markets.
as traders you are providing liquidity what type of liquidity are you providing @ 3:00 in the morning to other piker traders?
Having markets open during particular hours is great. You can sheduale you other activities appropriately. Also, wifes and kids wont complain as much. Because everyone has something else to do, not just trading. Its also good to have Saturday and Sunday off.