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As markets shift towards an always-on environment with the advent of 23/5 trading, one of the questions surrounding this has been how this will be achieved. At SALT and Kraken’s third annual Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, a panel of financial-industry executives made clear that 23/5 markets are the result of global investor demand.
But some questions regarding infrastructure remain. How much liquidity will exist during the 9pm-4am ET trading window, will collateral need to move in real-time, and what are the guardrails that will make 23/5 trading work in the long run?
Kevin Kennedy, Executive Vice President of North American Markets at Nasdaq, had a clear message during his session, titled “24/7 Trading: Making New Normal Markets.”
“The path is inevitable… it’s not whether it happens; it’s whether it happens in the correct way,” he said on 23/5 trading.
Kennedy was joined on stage by Yuval Rooz, Co-founder and Chief executive officer of Digital Asset and the Canton Network; Chris Bruner, Chief Product Officer at Tradeweb; and Sam Sidhu, President and Chief Executive Officer of Customers Bank. Jacquelyn Melinek, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of StrataMedia, moderated the conversation at the gathering, which brought together roughly 500 investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to discuss the future of digital assets.
For Kennedy, doing it the correct way means applying the standards of regulated equity markets to 23/5 trading hours. “We really want to bring not just liquidity, but also resiliency and integrity to the new trading hours,” he said, along with “industrial-grade guardrails” and transparency from the securities information processor (SIP) and the trade reporting facility (TRF). Those elements, he argued, are what will make institutions trust 23/5 markets enough to participate. “That’s a word you’ll hear me say a few times today: trust.”
Kennedy emphasized that new market structures should grow the overall market participation. Before the pandemic, U.S. equities traded about 7 billion shares a day; last quarter, average daily volume pushed up to 20 billion. If the industry builds the right foundation, he said, 30 to 40 billion shares would not surprise him. “This is all about building good, solid foundation that will advance the market.”
The conversation closed on artificial intelligence, which the panelists agreed will play a significant role in facilitating 23/5 trading. Kennedy argued that AI will bring “responsiveness, efficiency, and intelligence” to 23/5 trading. But humans will retain the ultimate responsibility, he insisted. “AI is not going to replace accountability.”
For investors and Nasdaq’s clients, the stakes are clear. A well-constructed 23/5 market could broaden access to U.S. equities, improve price discovery across more of the trading day, and give global participants new flexibility to manage risk. But as Kennedy emphasized, those benefits only materialize if the industry builds the right infrastructure first—liquidity, transparency, and trust—before scaling up. Firms that prepare now for extended-hours trading will be best positioned to capture the growth ahead.
Learn more from Nasdaq about 23×5 trading.
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