Overnight Trading Volumes at Interactive Brokers Rise 446%

Overnight trading, between 8pm ET and to 4am ET, at Interactive Brokers has increased 446% between the beginning of 2024 and the end of July, and is now 2.5% of all US trades, according to the automated electronic broker. Steve Sanders, executive vice president, marketing & product development at Interactive Brokers, said in a story in Markets Media that he believes the firm is the only truly global broker with clients in more than 200 countries. Interactive Brokers launched overnight trading in November 2022 with 24 US exchange-traded funds, and then added US stocks and ETFs in April 2023. In July 2023 the IBKR platform expanded to more than 10,000 US stocks and ETFs, and now also includes US equity index options. Clients worldwide can trade US securities nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week, in their own time zone and react immediately to market-moving news. Sanders continued that overnight trading has been tried many times in the US, but failed due to the lack of liquidity. He argued that Interactive Brokers has an advantage because of its large client base outside the US. He added: “This endeavor has gone better than I would have expected because of our international base.” He believes another advantage is that Interactive Brokers’ clients can access 150 market centers in 34 countries through a universal account, while complying with regulatory requirements.  The universal account allows clients to trade across multiple asset classes – stocks, options, futures, currencies, commodities, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs and crypto – from a single platform.