‘Worst Thing In The World’

Topline

Wells Fargo analysts on Tuesday criticized the Nasdaq Stock Market’s proposal to extend trading on U.S.-listed equities to 23 hours a day for five days a week, calling the plans the “worst thing in the world” and a risk to make stock trading “even more like gambling.”

The stock trading exchange proposed expanding trading hours to 23 hours each weekday, up from 16.

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Key Facts

The Nasdaq, one of the two major U.S. stock exchanges with the New York Stock Exchange, disclosed in a filing Monday it planned to submit paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission to expand trading hours to 23 hours each weekday, up from 16 hours.

If approved, stocks listed on the Nasdaq would be traded in a “day session” from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST and during a “night session” from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. the next morning.

“This is literally the worst thing in the world,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a note Tuesday, adding the move “gamifies” the stock market and is the “epitome of making trading even more like gambling.”

Market orders, which prioritize immediate execution of trades based on current prices, would remain limited to the traditional 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. trading hours.

Limit orders—which trade stocks when their price hits the order’s maximum or minimum price—would remain available throughout both trading sessions, as they are now during existing regular and extended hours.

Nasdaq argued that 23-hour trading days would expand trading on the stock exchange to investors outside the U.S. who would otherwise be unable to trade during the exchange’s regular hours, allowing the U.S. market to compete with foreign securities markets.

Wells Fargo disputed Nasdaq’s claim, arguing trading volume accelerates at market open and around close: “And the industry move is to then elongate the trading day even further? This makes no sense at all.”