You have that with the ES and with US treasuries. How liquid are they off hours? One of the most liquid equity spreads is probably spx/nky and spx/eurostoxx yet I bet volumes in the ES is tiny during the off hours.
You're right, but remember that all traders are not located in the same time zone. That's the main reason behind this extended trading hours thing. To allow traders from Europe , Asia and Australia to trade during their regular business hours. It's not to allow traders in EST zone to trade, cause like you said, nobody want to trade outside regular business hours. We all (at least me!) have a life outside trading....
I look at this a different way... Why isn't your local bank's office open at 2AM on Sat? Because it's run by people who are rather well off and they know that you'll still be willing to file that paperwork to borrow money from them during normal business hours. Personally, I have no problem with trading hours being limited. If I could change something, I'd much rather see the market move to a turn-based system where all orders must be valid for a minimum of one turn, and a turn is at least long enough of a time period for an actual human to be able to read a number off a computer screen. I think there are much bigger problems with the market than hours of operation.
Not enough liquidity during overnight session but you can trade asian and european index products and equities. Everyone needs time off.
That's sort of like saying a sealed bid auction doesn't create price discovery. Yes there's a delay, but a market price is still discovered. The market price would be more of a real market price because it would be a price for those who are actually willing to take ownership for more than a millisecond. To implement, you could just play out the opening rules 20x an hour rather than "continuous trading”. I think if you did this and coupled it with immediate settlement, you would fix many problems. No more spoofing. No more naked shorting. No more hidden transactions in dark pools.
I think that's actually a great idea. In many cases it would also obviate the need for MMs, which would take a whole layer out of the market. I wonder if you set up an exchange that worked this way if it could coexist with the existing marketplace or if it would have to be the only way a product traded for it to work?
Pretty much 24/7 from the world banks, but anything they can't lay off well will have a price for liquidity you may not like. During market vs. nonmarket can easily be a 5x or more difference in the cost of liquidity. TD via Virtu E Trade via Morgan - not fully accessible yet. Schwab via JPM - again the FI part is more robust right now. Mostly you pay phone order rates with the exception of TD and the SPY and I believe it's only 24/5.
Stocks will become like homes (pre-Zillow buying spree). The price will be lower because holders will demand a liquidity premium and the assets will be much less liquid. And opaque bidding will make it even worse. Price discovery will take many iterations as everyone will game the system instead of someone posting a public price and getting repeatedly walloped until he gets it right.