The TRADE sits down with Brian Hyndman, chief executive at Blue Ocean, to explore the current landscape for extended trading hours, and how regulation and future growth come into play.

Following various recent launches of auction volume discovery (AVD) order functionalities by leading European trading venues, Natasha Cocksedge explores this evolving landscape and what may come next.

The future of markets is increasingly being shaped beneath the surface, inside hosting environments, fibre networks and high-density compute infrastructure. Nearly two decades after its launch, LSEG’s Exchange Hosting’s evolution reflects a broader market reality: infrastructure is no longer adjacent to trading strategy - it is trading strategy.

The TRADE takes stock of the strategic and institutional implications of Frankfurt’s increasingly pan-European positioning, as Deutsche Börse’s Eurobridge looks to attract global trading houses while seeking to deepen, rather than split, liquidity.

The TRADE caught up with Alexandra Roby, head of equity sales, UK and Ireland, at SIX, to unpack key market structure changes taking place across Europe, from the decline of the lit book to the growth of periodic auctions, as well as the role played by incoming regulation and systematic internalisers.

As prediction markets continue to garner significant traction across everything from sports to politics, the concept is now entering the radar of institutional trading. Natasha Cocksedge explores the up-and-coming sector to question whether it is truly about ‘buying into the future’ and where the line between trading and gambling is drawn.

As momentum for extended trading hours builds and more offerings are expected to follow over the course of 2026, Natasha Cocksedge takes a closer look as the groundwork for these developments is laid by firms such as the DTCC, Cboe and Nasdaq.

In celebration of The TRADE’s twentieth birthday, editor Annabel Smith rounds up the 20 greatest trading innovations of the last few decades, exploring the solutions that have overhauled and reimagined the processes that traders depend on day in and day out to execute in the markets.

In light of the US ATS’ looking to migrate to Europe and new offerings being proposed by European exchanges, Annabel Smith weighs up increased fragmentation against innovation, exploring the new competitive landscape, the prospect of private rooms, and who might be the provider to benefit most from first mover advantage.