SEC Chairman Paul Atkins: Advancing 24-Hour Trading Preparation for US Stocks
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul S. Atkins stated at a roundtable on 24-hour trading that the commission is advancing preparations for expanding all-day trading of U.S. stocks. The extended hours are expected to allow investors to respond to events more promptly, increase global participation, and enhance liquidity.
He listed existing or upcoming infrastructure: depository trusts and clearing companies have launched a 23×5 trading capture system to support clearing and settlement; the industry has established overnight price ranges and requires trading centers operating at night to create and enforce written procedures to prevent trades outside these ranges; securities information processors are preparing for overnight price releases.
Market makers have reported difficulties in obtaining borrowable securities to support market making when spreads may widen. Atkins believes that tokenization is expected to achieve real-time inventory management of securities, improve efficiency, reduce settlement failures, and lower the risk of abusive naked short selling, with the goal of completely eliminating this possibility. He has asked staff to explore how to connect a growth-friendly environment with the prevention of harmful behaviors.
He also requested feedback from issuers on how all-day trading affects company actions, significant disclosures, and EDGAR timing, emphasizing that the advancement should be driven by industry dynamics, competition, and investor demand, and welcomes public comments. The roundtable covered preparedness and resilience, including topics such as market surveillance, closing prices, clearing, SCI rules, maintenance windows, and cybersecurity.
From a market mechanism perspective, this represents a regulatory endorsement combined with the expansion of clearing channels. Beneficiaries include delayed trading venues, cross-border retail gateways, and custodial and tokenization infrastructure that can link borrowing securities with inventory on-chain; the pressured parties are issuers' back offices that still process disclosures and company actions on a daily batch basis, and retail investors who bear wider spreads in thin liquidity. Funds will not immediately migrate from daytime trading, but the narrative of tokenization ties "24-hour stocks" and "on-chain inventory" into the same trading theme.
Source: Public Information
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At the same event, Peirce referred to the model as 23×5 and questioned optimal execution and EDGAR's closing time, while Atkins framed the same pipeline in terms of growth and global order grabbing. The chair's position determines the direction of sentences: commissioners raise risk lists, while the chair discusses preparation progress. DTCC's 23×5 separates clearing from stock trading hours, and SIP delays separate official market hours, but the missing element remains issuer disclosure timing.
The capital path first fixes clearing and market data costs, then uses tokenization to supplement borrowable securities. Overnight market making is hindered by locates, and on-chain inventory is described as a visible source of securities, thus linking 24-hour trading and anti-naked short selling to the same technological narrative. This parallels the idea of stablecoins as payments and securities tokens as the same asset: the clock issue translates into a ledger issue.
Analogies can be drawn from futures having night sessions before inventory replenishment, and crypto having 24-hour trading before custodial solutions: trading hours can be administratively advanced, but the source of securities cannot rely on slogans. The industry is in a phase of pipeline advancement, with disclosure and borrowing not yet aligned.
Structural judgments belong to the overlay of technological substitution and regulatory changes. The mechanism exposes the time gaps in batch settlement through continuous trading, with tokenization used to fill these gaps; whoever controls the real-time inventory view controls whether overnight market making can commence. If clock reforms do not synchronize with disclosure changes, 24-hour trading will only extend information asymmetry rather than liquidity.
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- Trading clocks can open first; if disclosure clocks do not open, it merely extends information asymmetry.
- Overnight market making lacks not slogans, but visible securities.
- Tokenization is often brought in to address the gaps left by batch clearing.