SEC Clears Nasdaq Path to 23-Hour Trading Week
The SEC has approved Nasdaq's proposal for 23-hour, five-day trading, a market-structure change that pushes overnight-session oversight, news-release timing and disclosure controls back onto issuers and their counsel.
According to a single Skadden client alert dated 14 October 2026, the SEC approved Nasdaq's proposal on 10 April 2026 to extend trading to 23 hours per day, five days per week (23x5). The same item signals that NYSE Arca is moving on an extended-hours launch as well, though the excerpted text does not describe the Arca proposal, its approval status, or its effective date, and the April approval date sits well before the alert's publication, so the current implementation timeline is unclear.
Why sophisticated counsel should care: overnight sessions shift the windows in which material information can move a security without continuous human coverage. Disclosure controls, Regulation FD practices, insider-trading windows, earnings-release sequencing, and the interaction with limit-up/limit-down and volatility pauses all need re-examination. Broker-dealer and market-operator members face new surveillance, clearing and risk-management expectations, and issuers with foreign listings will have to reconcile overnight US prints with home-market trading hours and time zones.
Concrete next steps: watch for the implementing rule text, the venues' rule filings and launch notices, and any SEC guidance on overnight disclosure and volatility controls; issuers should run a gap assessment of disclosure and blackout procedures before the first extended session goes live. Verify the underlying facts with primary SEC and exchange filings before relying on them.