WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE MARKETS Robinhood to Launch 24-Hour Trading on Weekdays in Stocks and ETFs The online brokerage says all customers will have access by next month By Alexander Osipovich and Hannah Miao Updated May 10, 2023 6:50 pm ET 6 Robinhood plans to allow round-the-clock trading between 8 p.m. ET Sunday and 8 p.m. ET Friday in 43 securities. PHOTO: ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS Users of Robinhood Markets HOOD -0.44%decrease; red down pointing triangle’ popular app will soon be able to trade Tesla shares in the middle of the night. Robinhood said Wednesday that it will offer 24-hour trading of selected stocks and exchange-traded funds, five days a week. The move is part of a growing push in parts of the financial industry to expand trading beyond traditional Wall Street operating hours. The brokerage plans to allow round-the-clock trading between 8 p.m. ET Sunday and 8 p.m. ET Friday in 43 securities, including some popular stocks such as Amazon.com, Apple and Tesla. Robinhood will begin to roll out the feature next week, and all customers are expected to have it by June, the company says. Over time Robinhood plans to make more stocks and ETFs available for overnight trading, Chief Executive Vlad Tenev said in an interview. A pre-markets primer packed with news, trends and ideas. Plus, up-to-the-minute market data. “It’s the next step in evolving the market to how it should work, which is 24/7, and more like a piece of software rather than a brick-and-mortar institution that’s tied to U.S. East Coast working hours,” Mr. Tenev said. Robinhood is hoping that 24/5 trading will help it regain some of the buzz it has lost as the pandemic-era boom in individual-investor activity has faded and the company’s stock has slumped since its 2021 initial public offering. Late Wednesday afternoon, the firm said first-quarter revenue rose 47% from a year earlier, pushing its shares up modestly in after-hours trading. Still, Robinhood lost $511 million for the period, marking its seventh-straight quarterly loss as a public company. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue Normal U.S. stock-trading hours run from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET Monday to Friday, a convention that dates back nearly four decades. Many brokers offer “extended hours” trading sessions that start as early as 4 a.m. ET and end in the evenings at 8 p.m. ET. But night-owl investors who wish to buy or sell stocks even later at night have few options. Rival brokerages E*Trade and TD Ameritrade allow overnight trading between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. ET, but only in about two dozen ETFs. Robinhood is set to become the first U.S. brokerage to provide overnight trading in individual stocks. Robinhood was one of the most valuable startups in Silicon Valley before its IPO. But its share price has struggled since then. Illustration: Preston Jessee Trading activity is typically thin outside of normal market hours, meaning that relatively small bursts of buying or selling can trigger price swings. As a safeguard, Robinhood customers trading overnight will only be able to place limit orders—in which the investor specifies a maximum price to buy or a minimum price to sell—and not riskier market orders. Robinhood will route customers’ nighttime stock orders to Blue Ocean, a trading platform that runs a special session between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. ET. Other U.S. brokers that offer overnight trading use Blue Ocean as well. Electronic market-making firms such as Jane Street Group and Virtu Financial take the other side of investors’ orders on Blue Ocean, and seek to profit by buying stocks for a slightly lower price than they sell them for. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS How will round-the-clock trading change stock trading? Join the conversation below. Blue Ocean has also partnered with major Asian brokerages, such as South Korea’s Samsung Securities and Hong Kong’s Futu, to offer their customers access to U.S. stocks during daytime hours in Asia. Asian investors have helped Blue Ocean’s trading volumes rise to an average of 16.9 million shares a night in April, up from 1.1 million in January, the company says. Another startup trading platform, 24 Exchange, recently applied for approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch the first U.S. stock exchange that would operate around the clock, including on weekends and holidays. But 24 Exchange withdrew its application in February. A spokesman said the company needed more time to address “open items.” The main open item concerned how 24 Exchange would connect to public data feeds that broadcast prices from all the U.S. stock exchanges, people familiar with the matter said. These data feeds—called securities information processors, or SIPs—don’t operate overnight. Blue Ocean, which isn’t a full-fledged exchange, isn’t required to report stock-quote data to the SIPs. 24 Exchange “is working with the SEC to resolve these open items and resubmit its application as soon as it is ready,” the spokesman said. Write to Alexander Osipovich at alexo@wsj.com and Hannah Miao at hannah.miao@wsj.com
HOOD has been hovering around 7.5 and 12 for many months. It will continue to hover around that region unless there is some major event.
I don't like the idea tbh. All trading should only be between 9:30am-4pm. Everything else is just noise and manipulation. Algo's running 24/7. I already learned that the market is untradeable outside RTH from future indexes.
Who would want to trade through Robinhood after what they did in 2021 with gamestop? No one in their right mind.
I think it's about time...The symbol of capitalism is operating at union hours! Opening the market to 24/7 (I realize this isn't what they're offering, but they're opening the door to it) will significantly increase activities from global non pro traders who are now constrained by time zone. I'm hoping that within 5 years we see as much volume from off hours as we see from today's standard time bracket. We might even see some divestment from smaller trading markets to US markets.
I was reading, yesterday, as a memory came back : https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...e-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/amp/
Interactive brokers offers 24/5 trading in some ETFs. So nothing new here. Spreads although are very bad. Better stick to futures
Fantastic idea but their platform is horrible and only offers ineffective tools. I get the impression they cater to teenagers gambling on their phones for beer money.