Two changes approved four days apart in April together reshape the American trading day - how many hours it lasts, and who is allowed to trade in it.
Errors or inaccuracies are possible. Spotted something that looks wrong? Write to me and I will correct it.
What Exactly Was Approved
On 10 April 2026 the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved Nasdaq's request to extend trading hours in NMS stocks to 23 hours a day, five days a week.
And a clarification is needed here, because the number circulates inaccurately in conversation: the format is 23/5, not 23/7. Trading does not open at weekends.
| Eastern time | Israel time | |
|---|---|---|
| Day Session | 4:00 - 20:00 | 11:00 - 03:00 |
| Maintenance pause | 20:00 - 21:00 | 03:00 - 04:00 |
| Night Session | 21:00 - 4:00 | 04:00 - 11:00 |
The Night Session is defined as the time between 9:00 p.m. on one calendar day and 4:00 a.m. the next, Sunday through Thursday, provided that the following day is a Business Day.
And the one-hour pause is not purely technical: it is intended for maintenance and testing, and for processing dividends, stock splits and other corporate actions pending for the next trading day.
And this is the point that matters to a reader in Israel more than any other.
The American night session falls, on summer time, between 4:00 and 11:00 in the morning Israel time.
Today, an Israeli investor wanting to trade an American stock in regular hours has to stay up until 23:30. Under the new format, the morning hours in Israel become active trading hours on Nasdaq.
That is a practical change in access, and it holds for those who are not day traders too: it changes the hour at which one can respond to news published overnight.
What Is Different in the Night Session
This is not a copy of the trading day moved to other hours. Per the order, in the night session:
- All NMS stocks will trade - not a restricted list
- Unpriced orders will not be permitted, pegged orders among them
- M-ELO orders will be rejected
- The exchange's clearly erroneous execution rule will apply at night too
- The night session will use dedicated ports and OUCH 5 technology
The ban on unpriced orders is the most interesting of these. A pegged order relies on a reference price from the market; in a thin market, a reference price is precisely what cannot be relied on. That rule says something about how the exchange itself assesses the depth of liquidity at night.
And Why It Has Not Happened Yet
Approval is not activation. The order provides that Nasdaq will not operate the night session so long as the consolidated data plans - the CTA, CQ and UTP plans - have not established a mechanism to collect, consolidate, process and disseminate quotation and transaction information during overnight hours.
And in addition: Nasdaq will be required to file a further proposed rule change confirming its own readiness and that of the data plans.
So there are two gates here, and neither has opened. Anyone counting the days to overnight trading should count them from there, not from the date of approval.
And the Second Change: the $25,000 Rule Is Gone
Four days after the Nasdaq approval, on 14 April, the SEC approved something else entirely - an amendment to FINRA Rule 4210, which governs margin requirements.
What was eliminated:
- The "pattern day trader" designation - anyone executing four or more day trades in a five-business-day window
- The $25,000 minimum equity requirement for such an account
- The computation and use of "day-trading buying power"
This is Rule 4210(f)(8)(B), in force since 2001. In its place comes an intraday margin standard, under which the customer must hold equity in the account commensurate with their exposure to the market at any given point - rather than a fixed dollar threshold.
And the timetable: FINRA announces the effective date in a Regulatory Notice, and members were given the ability to phase in implementation over up to 18 months from that publication.
And here something easy to get wrong deserves precision.
The rule was not scrapped in order to loosen things. It was replaced by a standard designed, per its own wording, to match collateral to actual exposure.
In a small account trading lightly, the requirement falls, because there is no longer a $25,000 entry threshold.
In an account taking large intraday exposure, the requirement can actually rise, because it is derived from the exposure rather than from a fixed sum.
Anyone reading this as "a restriction removed" is reading only the first half of the sentence.
What the Two Changes Do Together
Each on its own is a technical change. Together they move two sides of the same triangle.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| How many hours | 16 hours a day (4:00-20:00) | 23 hours |
| Who can | Active day trading from $25,000 | The equity threshold is gone |
And the third side, the one that did not change, is liquidity. The number of hours grew 44%, but the number of buyers and sellers does not grow at the same rate - it is spread across more time.
What This Means for Volatility
This is worth explaining through the mechanism rather than the feeling.
The spread between bid and offer is set largely by the depth of the book. The fewer orders on both sides, the more a single order moves the price.
So a market spread over 23 hours instead of 16 is not necessarily a stormier market - but it is a market with thinner hours. A move at 5 a.m. New York time does not necessarily say the same thing as an identical move at 11 a.m.
And two provisions in the order itself acknowledge this: the ban on unpriced orders, and the use of separate ports. The exchange built the night session as a distinct environment, not as a continuation of the day.
הזווית שלי
דעה אישית של אילן אברמוב - לא ייעוץ ולא המלצה
These two changes pull in the same direction, and I think that direction is right - with one reservation.
The right part is access. A $25,000 threshold set in 2001 was never adjusted for inflation, and in practice it barred a small investor from an activity open to a large one. Replacing an arbitrary threshold with a measurement of actual exposure is a clear improvement - it measures risk instead of measuring account size.
And the night session, for someone sitting in Israel, is a real change. Seven trading hours falling between 4 and 11 in the morning here turn American trading from a midnight activity into a morning one. That is not only a matter of convenience - it changes the distance between the moment news is published and the moment one can act on it.
And my reservation is liquidity.
An open market is not necessarily an active one. If the night session draws thin volume, the price set in it will be noisier - and a noisy price is one that is easy to be wrong about. Anyone trading in those hours needs to understand they are not trading the same market, but a thin version of it.
And what I will look for when it opens: not the size of the moves, but the bid-offer spread in the night hours. That is the number that will say whether a real market was built there or only open hours.
And one more thing worth holding: the extension is not yet in force. It depends on the readiness of the consolidated data systems and on a further Nasdaq rule filing - so any date circulating now is an estimate, not a timetable.
(An important note: this is my personal opinion only, and nothing here is a recommendation to take any action.)
