The global push toward always-on trading is accelerating faster than the liquidity and risk controls needed to support it, according to market infrastructure data from B2BROKER and a fresh International Monetary Fund analysis. Trading platforms are extending access across US equities, crypto derivatives, gold and other markets, but the operational challenge is shifting from keeping an interface open to supporting continuous pricing, hedging and controls.
B2BROKER data for its B2CONNECT infrastructure shows 15 live liquidity-provider integrations, 47 live provider sessions, more than 800 subscribed markets and 17 production hubs. The system distributes prices to 1,265 concurrent client connections and reports 99.99% uptime excluding scheduled maintenance. Its B2TRADER execution environment doubled live production deployments from nine to 18 over six months, recorded 73,667 trades and about $15.85 billion in production volume, with 90.6% of that volume arriving in the final three months and 99.97% in CFDs. B2CORE supports 344,648 end users, 489,267 active trading accounts and about $4.91 billion in client deposits, while B2COPY processed $191.41 billion in copied notional and 95.28 million copied deals, with a peak of more than one million copied deals in a single hour.
US overnight equity volume reached an average 144.6 million shares a day in August, according to SEC staff data cited in the analysis. That was a 359% year-on-year increase, but still only 0.9% of total National Market System share volume. Liquidity is concentrated: the ten busiest stocks accounted for 43.4% of overnight volume, compared with 10.3% during regular hours, and the top 100 generated 82% versus 34% in the core session. Foreign accounts produced about 37% of overnight share volume and 24% of dollar volume during the second quarter, reflecting demand from Asia, Europe and the Middle East during local daytime hours.
The expansion is fragmented rather than universal. Interactive Brokers already offers overnight access to more than 10,000 US stocks and ETFs on a 24/6 schedule, Robinhood operates a 24 Hour Market for a selected list, CME has moved regulated crypto futures and options to seven-day trading, Nasdaq plans a near 23-hour trading day and the London Stock Exchange is developing a separate 24/5 venue initially aimed at exchange-traded products. Each venue uses its own hours, eligible instruments, market-maker arrangements and maintenance windows, and order types that work in the main session may not be supported overnight.
The same issue appears in commodities and crypto-style continuous markets. Brokers are expanding continuous gold access while product structures and leverage limits vary across entities, and MarketsVox’s 24/7 commodity CFDs raise the question of who establishes a tradable weekend price when core futures and interbank reference markets are thin or closed. Kraken’s round-the-clock equity, index and commodity perpetuals show how customer expectations formed in crypto are crossing into other asset classes.
When a client order cannot be hedged efficiently, a broker can match it against opposing customer flow or carry residual exposure. Both approaches require live exposure measurement, because an apparently balanced book can change quickly after a price move, a wave of stop orders or a regional news event. Continuous access therefore increases the value of routing choices and session-specific liquidity metrics, not just uptime claims.
The IMF warning reinforces the same theme for tokenized assets. In its October 2026 analysis, the Fund put daily trading volume in tokenized assets, including credit instruments, money market funds and equities, at about $65 billion. That figure measures activity, not outstanding market size. Daily tokenized repo volume was estimated at roughly $300 billion to $350 billion, compared with about $13 trillion in the conventional US repo market. Tokenized markets remain small, fragmented, relatively illiquid and more volatile than conventional counterparts.
A key distinction in the IMF’s analysis is between transferability, saleability and redeemability. A token may move to another eligible wallet around the clock while direct redemptions remain limited to scheduled dealing days or authorised investors. The IMF found more than half of the tokenized-equity trading it examined took place outside traditional market hours, and about 80% of analysed trades were for less than one share, showing demand for fractional and continuous access. Overnight tokenized-equity returns were reflected in traditional equity prices shortly after markets opened, suggesting both markets respond to similar information even when tokenized venues remain thinner and more volatile.
As tokenized systems compress trading, settlement and funding stages, the IMF warns that risk controls, liquidity facilities and operational safeguards need to keep pace when older buffers shrink. Stress can build quickly when thin markets, leverage, shared settlement assets and automated collateral or redemption rules interact at the same time, and fire sales, liquidity runs and contagion could spread through new channels. The practical conclusion is that a fast transfer is useful, but it is not the same as a dependable exit.
