Across financial markets, momentum is building behind the idea of expanding trading hours to meet the demands of a global, digitally connected investor base. From major exchanges and brokerages to clearinghouses and regulators, the industry is actively exploring what it would take to support near-continuous and eventually continuous trading.
In its recently released white paper, Considerations of a Continuous Trading Environment and Implications for Central Clearing of U.S. Listed Options: Perspectives on CCP issues from a utility model clearinghouse, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) outlines both a vision and a roadmap for how the U.S. listed options market could evolve toward a 24-7 model, beginning with a phased transition to a 22-5 trading and clearing environment.
According to OCC, exchange operators like Nasdaq, Cboe Global Markets, and Intercontinental Exchange have publicly expressed interest in moving their equity platforms toward near-continuous operations. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the 24X National Exchange to operate 23 hours a day, five days a week. At the same time, several retail brokerage firms, including Robinhood and Charles Schwab, have extended their own trading hours to allow for overnight transactions in major index-linked securities.
The white paper notes that this momentum is not isolated to equities. Derivatives exchanges are exploring similar moves: Coinbase launched 24-7 trading for Bitcoin and Ethereum futures earlier this year, while CME Group, which already offers 24-5 access for a wide range of products, has announced plans to transition to full 24-7 trading by 2026.
OCC itself has been clearing select products under its Extended Trading Hours (ETH) program since 2015. Through its Encore Global platform, OCC currently supports clearing for index options and index futures traded on Cboe and CFE during extended sessions. However, these efforts are still limited in scope and participation.
In its white paper, OCC proposes a phased approach that begins with a shift to a 22-5 trading and clearing model, providing 22 hours of operations per day, five days a week, with the remaining two hours reserved for scheduled system maintenance, operational adjustments, and risk recalibrations.
“We recommend a gradual transition to a 22-5 or 23-5 model, leaving a window for trade reconciliation and end-of-day processing, and maintaining weekends for system maintenance, backups and data deployments,” Andrej Bolkovic ,OCC CEO, commented.
This approach would enable clearing members (CMs), exchanges, and regulators to build institutional muscle memory around the processes and risk protocols required to manage real-time markets, according to the paper.
Still, the transition raises meaningful technical and structural challenges, particularly in the options market. OCC highlights that “listed equity options… have a strike price and expiration date,” and those expirations currently follow “a fixed weekly, monthly, and quarterly schedule”.
Beyond lifecycle management, the reliability of price discovery becomes a central concern, according to the white paper. Market makers depend on real-time access to the underlying equity to hedge their options exposure. Without liquidity or up-to-date pricing in the underlying security, the OCC warns that “options pricing may become skewed,” which could lead market makers to pull back during thinly traded sessions. The paper underscores the importance of consistent trading hours across underlying securities, options contracts, and clearing operations to maintain market integrity.
Operationally, OCC acknowledges the need to transition from “centralized cut-offs for trade processing, market close pricing, margin calculation, and collateral management” to “event-driven workflows” that function around the clock. That shift would require multiple daily margin and settlement cycles instead of the single end-of-day model used today. OCC also explores the possibility of intraday margin calls during extended hours to address increased volatility or thinning liquidity in overnight sessions.
New challenges also arise around data and regulatory reporting according to OCC. In a near-continuous market, legacy end-of-day reporting formats for margin, stress tests, and capital requirements would need to be overhauled. The OCC explains that reports traditionally generated overnight—when markets are quiet—would need to shift to “rolling processes that align with near-continuous trading,” potentially requiring collaboration with regulators to redefine when and how data is captured and submitted.
Looking beyond 22-5, a full move to 24-7 trading would raise the stakes further. With no downtime windows, system infrastructure would need to support “rolling updates” and “hot-hot” environments capable of operating without maintenance breaks, according to the paper. OCC acknowledges that such a leap would require deeper regulatory coordination—both domestic and international—and a significant shift toward automation and resilience across the financial system.
As the paper emphasizes, “expanded trading offers benefits and opportunities in terms of access, [but] it also requires substantial adjustments throughout financial markets and at CCPs themselves.”