Online brokers allowing pre-market, after-hours, extended-hours trading on stocks and options. Who can trade after hours?

Extended-Hours Trading Explained

If you work during the week and can’t trade during the regular stock-market session, no problem. You can still trade equities (and other investment vehicles) outside the normal session, which runs from 9:30 am, Eastern Time, until 4:00 pm. You just need to find a broker that offers pre-market and after-hours trading and understand how to enter those orders.

Extended-Hours Trading Varies from Broker to Broker

Some brokerage firms don’t offer any extended-hours trading. Among the ones that do, the hours can vary quite a bit. For example, Vanguard doesn’t offer trading before the opening bell; although it does have an after-hours session, it ends at 6:30 pm.

Charles Schwab offers both an early session and a late-night session. Charles Schwab customers can trade select stocks and ETFs 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. This is among the longest extended-hours schedules currently available for stock trading.

Placing an Extended-Hours Trade

To submit an order before the market opens or after it closes, you usually must do something different, such as enroll for extended-hours trading or select a special setting on the trade ticket. This latter option is the standard process at Charles Schwab.

Charles Schwab's thinkorswim platform order ticket has a drop-down for trading hours. If you want your order to be eligible for execution during these times, select EXT AM, EXT PM, or EXT 13h for extended hours, and EXTO 24h for overnight trading (GTC means "good till canceled" when available).





Some brokerage firms use somewhat different software. For example, Firstrade’s trading setup offers regular market hours, day + extended hours, and overnight trading choices.

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Why Would You Want to Trade During Extended Hours?

Traders want to place orders outside of normal market hours for all kinds of reasons. In the United States, many public companies release earnings numbers before the market opens or after it closes. If you are only able to trade during regular market hours, you could miss a major trading opportunity if there is a surprise announcement. By the time you get in, it may be too late.

Another reason traders want access to pre-market and after-hours trading is to lock in profits when news breaks or when a government releases economic data. For example, if a war breaks out overnight in the Middle East, the stock prices of many companies will be affected before the opening bell.

Overnight Trading

Some brokerage firms in the United States now offer overnight stock and ETF trading in select securities. Instead of shutting down at 8:00 pm, they continue offering trading in certain stocks and funds 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. Trading halts Friday evening and resumes Sunday evening.

At Robinhood, we found 1134 stocks and ETFs available for overnight trading. Eligible symbols appear in Robinhood’s 24 Hour Market list. Robinhood’s overnight session uses limit orders for supported names, not the same order flow used for ordinary daytime stock trades.





To place a trade using the broker’s software, you need to use the 24 Hour Market session for eligible symbols. Robinhood’s overnight stocks and ETFs also use limit orders, and unsupported symbols can only use the regular available trading sessions.