Nasdaq Targets Dec. 6 for 23-Hour Weekday Stock Trading

Nasdaq plans to begin 23-hour weekday trading Dec. 6, adding an overnight session. Overnight returns on tokenized U.S. equity products tracked moves in the first five minutes of conventional trading.

Nasdaq announced Friday, Oct. 23, that it is targeting Dec. 6 for the schedule, which would add a 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. ET session. Trading would run from Sunday at 9 p.m. to Friday at 8 p.m. ET, with a daily pause from 8 to 9 p.m. ET and a weekend closure. Nasdaq’s regular 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET session, including its opening and closing crosses, would remain.

The SEC approved Nasdaq’s core 23/5 rule change on April 10, 2026. Implementation remains conditional on Securities Information Processor readiness and applicable SEC rule changes. Chuck Mack, Nasdaq’s senior vice president of North American Markets, said that “global investor behavior is changing, and investors increasingly expect access to U.S. markets that aligns with their own time zones and information cycles.”

The analysis covered overnight returns for tokenized exposures to the S&P 500, Nasdaq, Tesla, Google and NVIDIA. Ondo and xStocks issued the products, which traded across 11 centralized and decentralized venues. Pass-through coefficients between overnight token returns and corresponding underlying returns during the first five minutes of U.S. trading ranged from 87% to 99%. The results indicate that both markets responded to similar information in the sample, but do not establish that token trading caused or predicted the opening moves.

The sample covered 365 trading days and more than 2 million five-minute observations. It represented about $345 million, or 15% of the $2.3 billion tokenized-equity market as of July 31, 2026. More than half of trading activity occurred outside regular U.S. market hours, and about 80% of trades were smaller than one share.

Tokenized equities had about 1.5 times the realized volatility of comparable traditional equities and lower liquidity, especially on decentralized exchanges. The findings may change as the market grows or its structure changes. Tokenized equity products can represent different claims or price exposure, so they do not necessarily confer direct ownership of shares.

Nasdaq’s target start date is Dec. 6, subject to the stated readiness conditions.