> Why can't I as a regular retail investor trade a stock on Saturday?
Markets have chosen to concentrate trading to specific hours so as to concentrate liquidity and to help out the professional traders. If everyone's trading 24/7 then it means you need to be prepared to trade 24/7. Having defined market hours means defined hours in which important things can happen. And since the people who work in the market can also define the hours, they've chosen to give themselves reasonable working hours.
In a world where the major markets are trading 24/7, traders need to be at their desk 24/7.
> Why can't I move money from one bank account to another on Sunday?
Instant money transfer means instantly draining someone's bank account with no recourse. Checks have plenty of opportunities to stop the money, so you can write a check on a Sunday as easily as a Wednesday. Wires are more irreversible and so you can only send those when the bank is open and there's someone to double check any suspicious behavior.
Crypto trades 24/7 and I don't see anyone complaining or liquidity problems. Lots of people can't trade in the public markets because they are at work those hours. Let's just admit it s all a legacy antiquated system instead of finding excuses for its shortcomings
Except sophisticated traders are allowed to trade outside of market hours (after hours markets are a thing). When news drops, price is absolutely affected in the after-hours market.
It's only the regular Joe's that are not allowed the priviledge to trade at all hours.
Anyone can trade after hours. It’s just a shit illiquid market so you shouldn’t be doing it unless you are absolutely certain on the price you want to pay. It’s not a special privilege.
> Instant money transfer means instantly draining someone's bank account with no recourse. Checks have plenty of opportunities to stop the money, so you can write a check on a Sunday as easily as a Wednesday. Wires are more irreversible and so you can only send those when the bank is open and there's someone to double check any suspicious behavior.
We have instant 24/7 money transfer in EU/Eurozone using SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (well technically it has "up to 10 second" delay) and it hasn't really been an issue.
I can do an instant payment at the bank I work at, on a Sunday. We just warn clients that there’s no recourse but we give them the option. This is a choice, not an act of god. Our clients (including me) love it.
Liquidity had been a concern historically. Traders couldn't necessarily get good execution outside normal exchange hours, especially for lower volume securities. But now there are so many HFT firms willing to take the other side of any trade that I think the liquidity concern has become moot, at least for regular stocks and bonds.
Even during the current trading hours liquidity isn't uniform but more concentrated around certain times of day - that might "smear out" over more time, not move to the additional days, or block trades start smaller or ...
Changes to market structure should at least be analyzed thoroughly as we don't want any "parasitic" strategies to gain from changes.
> Instant money transfer means instantly draining someone's bank account with no recourse. Checks have plenty of opportunities to stop the money, so you can write a check on a Sunday as easily as a Wednesday.
This argument doesn't actually work; the period during which you can recover a check that shouldn't have been valid is (much) longer than the settlement period. This immediately shows that instant transfer does not mean instantly draining someone's account with no recourse. The recourse period isn't related to the settlement period.
Markets have chosen to concentrate trading to specific hours so as to concentrate liquidity and to help out the professional traders. If everyone's trading 24/7 then it means you need to be prepared to trade 24/7. Having defined market hours means defined hours in which important things can happen. And since the people who work in the market can also define the hours, they've chosen to give themselves reasonable working hours.
In a world where the major markets are trading 24/7, traders need to be at their desk 24/7.
> Why can't I move money from one bank account to another on Sunday?
Instant money transfer means instantly draining someone's bank account with no recourse. Checks have plenty of opportunities to stop the money, so you can write a check on a Sunday as easily as a Wednesday. Wires are more irreversible and so you can only send those when the bank is open and there's someone to double check any suspicious behavior.