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 have a daytime job and can’t trade during normal market hours, don’t worry. You can still place trades for stocks (and other assets) outside the usual session, which runs from 9:30 am, EST, to 4:00 pm. You just need to find a broker that offers pre-market and after-hours trading and learn how to submit these trades.

Extended-Hours Trading Varies from Broker to Broker

Some brokerage firms don’t provide any extended-hours trading. Among those that do, schedules can differ a lot. Vanguard, for example, doesn’t have pre-market trading, although it does have a post-market session that closes at 6:30 pm.

Charles Schwab offers both an early-morning session and an evening session. Customers at Charles Schwab can trade 24 hours a day. This is currently the longest extended-hours window for stock trading.

Placing an Extended-Hours Trade

To place a trade before the opening bell or after the market closes, you usually need to do something special, like register for extended-hours trading or click a specific box on the standard trade ticket. This latter approach is how it works at Charles Schwab.

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





Some brokerage firms have different software. For instance, Firstrade’s order ticket provides choices for after-hours only, pre-market only, or both sessions plus the regular session.

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Why Would You Want to Trade During Extended Hours?

Traders like to place orders outside the regular market session for many reasons. In the U.S., public companies announce earnings before the market opens or after it closes, never during market hours. If you’re only able to trade from 9:30 to 4:00, you could miss a big opportunity if a surprise earnings report appears. By the time you’re ready to get in, it could be too late.

Another reason for pre-market and after-hours access is to secure gains when news events happen or when a government releases economic figures. For example, a conflict breaking out overnight in the Middle East can change a lot of stock prices before the opening bell.

Pitfalls of Extended Hours

Even though trading during these special sessions has benefits, there are also drawbacks:

Lower liquidity. Fewer participants can make it tougher to find someone to take the other side of your trade.

Wider bid/ask spreads. Fewer trades generally mean spreads widen, which can increase trading costs.

Less volume. Same issue.

Overnight Trading

Another U.S. brokerage firm now has overnight stock and ETF trading in a limited set of funds. Instead of shutting down at 8:00 pm, it keeps going on a few securities 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. It pauses Friday evening and starts back up Sunday evening.

At Robinhood, we found 1051 stocks and ETFs available for overnight trades. Some are well-known funds like SPY and GLD. To see the entire list on the website, go to the main page by clicking on the Robinhood logo at the top-left corner. Once on the homepage, scroll down until you reach the “Trending Lists” section. In this area, you’ll see groups like Daily Movers and Technology. One of these lists will be the 24 Hour Market.





To submit a trade on the broker’s platform, you don’t need to do anything special. The overnight stocks and ETFs trade the same way they do during normal hours.