Starting December 6, 2026, will offer a trading session starting at 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. ET. The new hours, in addition to the standard 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET and current pre- and post-market trading sessions, would extend the exchange’s trading to nearly 23 hours a day, five days a week, from Sunday evening through Friday evening.
Doing so would not only allow Nasdaq to capture higher domestic volumes and increase its revenue, but also provide value for international investors and better rival 24/7 crypto trading.
During the tech melt-up of the dotcom boom in 1999, Nasdaq proposed keeping its exchange open for 24 hours. The market crashed, and it wasn’t enacted. Below we share a few concerns worth considering regarding Nasdaq’s longer sessions.
- Poor liquidity in off-peak hours will result in wider bid-offer spreads and more volatility
- Wells Fargo analysts reportedly called the proposal “the worst thing in the world,” arguing it would push equity trading further toward feeling like a casino rather than a market for long-term capital allocation
- Running compliance, risk management, and trading desks across a near-continuous 23-hour cycle, with just a one-hour maintenance window, is a real staffing and operational burden for brokerages, exchanges, and the firms that support them.
- Questions remain about whether information processors, like those disseminating price data, and clearing firms can fully support the Nasdaq proposal.
Whether 2026 rhymes with 1999 and the proposal is quashed remains to be seen. Either way, Nasdaq and Wall Street have a lot to consider before moving ahead with the proposal.
BuyBacks Are Not Yield Curve Control Or Operation Twist
Yesterday’s announced increase in the Treasury’s buyback program, as we detailed HERE, drew comparisons to two more famous bond market interventions: the Fed’s 2011-2012 Operation Twist and yield curve control (YCC). Both comparisons are inaccurate.
Yield curve control occurs when a central bank explicitly targets an interest rate level and buys whatever quantity of bonds it takes to maintain that level. YCC is QE, but unlike more traditional QE, where the central bank targets a quantity of bonds without a rate target, under YCC the central bank intentionally buys enough bonds to reach a specific interest rate target. The Fed used YCC during and after WWII (1942 to 1947) to cap long-term rates at 2.50%. More recently, to near zero from 2016 to 2024.
Treasury’s buyback program shares none of that architecture. There’s no announced yield target and no open-ended commitment, just a cap: $4 billion per operation. Importantly, the Treasury will issue debt to buy back debt; thus, it is not adding to the money supply or reserves on bank balance sheets that could increase the money supply. YCC is a central bank tool, and this is a Treasury Department one.
The Operation Twist comparison is not much better. Under Operation Twist, the Fed sold short-term securities and bought long-term ones simultaneously to reshape the yield curve. Treasury’s buybacks aren’t immediately offset by a matching short-end sale. In fact, the Treasury could issue “on-the-run” to buy cheaper bonds that lie between the two maturities. For instance, as we show below, the yield on the is about 25 basis points too cheap to the yield curve. The Treasury could issue 10-year and 30-year bonds to buy back 20-year bonds and save 25bps.
We have no doubts that the Treasury is increasing buybacks in part to cap the recent increase in yields. However, comparing this Treasury debt management operation to Fed operations is a big error.
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