Night ETF Trading Arrives for TD Ameritrade Customers

Stock traders who want to do nighttime trading can now do so through TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. According to a story in Bloomberg news, the second-biggest discount broker now lets customers buy and sell 12 U.S. exchange-traded funds 24 hours a day on weekdays. Clients in Asia will be among the beneficiaries, gaining the ability to trade U.S. products during their daylight hours, but Americans wanting to key off late-breaking news can participate, too. The traditional exchanges operate from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. est. The reality has long been that a lot of trading takes place outside those hours. Exchanges like NYSE Arca and the Nasdaq Stock Market are open from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. every weekday. Back during the 1990s dot-com run up, there was talk of 24-hours-a-day trading through the new electronic markets that popped up during that era. TD Ameritrade is taking a step toward finally making that a reality. Few orders placed through retail brokers such as TD Ameritrade ever reach a public exchange like NYSE. They’re fed to firms which execute the trades internally, and because those firms are highly automated, their computers should be able to complete orders at any hour of the day. TD Ameritrade says it’s working with Virtu Financial to route and execute orders through this new all-night session.