Stacie Swanstrom, chief product officer at Pico
In 2026, the shift toward 24/7 trading will reveal which institutions are truly built for a global market and which are still operating on legacy assumptions. For years, firms have talked about being ‘always on’, but few have truly designed their systems, processes and teams to function continuously across time zones.
As more venues extend trading hours and liquidity becomes less bound by geography, market participants will face a new kind of readiness test. The challenge won’t be about speed, but about sustaining performance and oversight without interruption.
Firms will need continuous observability, automated controls and the ability to respond instantly when volatility strikes – no matter the hour.
The transition to around-the-clock markets won’t happen overnight, but it will expose structural weaknesses in how many institutions operate today. The firms that adapt first will define what ‘global’ really means in the next era of market infrastructure.
Jason Wallach, chief executive, Bruce Markets
The past several years made one thing clear: extending the US trading day was never a question of demand. Investors were already active overnight, and global markets proved that liquidity would show up if given the chance.
The real friction point was the underlying machinery. Key components – clearing cycles, data availability, corporate-action dissemination, venue redundancy – were designed for a discrete trading session, not continuous activity.
That picture has changed considerably. Over the course of 2025, the overnight market underwent a structural shift. Multiple fully operational venues now provide true redundancy, removing the single-point-of-failure dynamic that long defined extended hours.
Brokerage tools and routing logic have matured to more closely mirror core-session standards. Coordination around market data, clearing windows and operational cutoffs has tightened, reducing the gaps that once limited risk appetite.
As a result, 2026 is the first year where 24-hour trading is supported by infrastructure built for continuity rather than novelty.
The coming year won’t be defined by announcements about ‘extended hours’ – it will be defined by the first real competitive overnight ecosystem in the US, and by the improvements in execution quality, predictability and investor experience that follow from it.
Magnus Haglind, senior vice president, head of capital markets technology, Nasdaq
The next 12 months will mark a decisive shift in how we define mission-critical infrastructure. It’s no longer limited to systems that clear and settle trades; it now encompasses platforms that enable interoperability, real-time decision-making, and operational resilience in always-on markets.
As settlement acceleration and 24-hour trading become our new reality, institutions will need to adopt operating models that prioritise agility and security without sacrificing trust or investor protection.
As markets evolve, the interaction of mission-critical systems will face growing scrutiny, making interoperability an essential requirement.
Cloud technology has firmly established itself as the foundation of modern infrastructure, offering the flexibility, scalability, and governance that legacy systems cannot match with unrivaled potential to unleash the power of AI.
The convergence of traditional and digital finance will accelerate, with the integration of tokenisation and distributed ledger technology becoming increasingly vital to existing market structures and platforms.
Strategic partnerships between established institutions and innovative platforms will bring fragmented liquidity pools and siloed digital asset projects together to deliver value.
In this new paradigm, mission-critical infrastructure extends to any system that sustains trust and continuity in a rapidly transforming financial ecosystem. The organisations that succeed will be those that embrace this expanded definition, investing in platforms that cater to this new reality while maintaining the integrity and protections that investors demand.