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Robinhood is planning to roll out a feature to let its millions of clients trade stocks well outside of normal market hours.
“We’re also close to delivering a feature that our customers have been asking for: an ever larger window of available trading hours. We call this feature ‘hyper-extended hours’ and anticipate rolling it out later this quarter,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said on the company’s earnings call on Thursday.
Depending on how much extended trading it will offer, this is the kind of change that likely needs the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the company did not say whether it has petitioned the regulatory body. The U.S. stock market opens at 9:30 a.m. ET and closes at 4:00 p.m. as part of its regular session. Extended trading is allowed as early as 4 a.m. and goes as late as 8 p.m. and some electronic brokers do offer that extended access.
Currently, Robinhood offers trading 30 minutes before the open and 2 hours after the close.
A representative for the SEC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Robinhood is not alone in seeking more trading hours than the norm, especially in a world where cryptocurrencies are traded 24 hours a day including weekends. A start-up backed by Steve Cohen, 24 Exchange, has filed a draft application with the SEC to provide 24-hour stock trading and told CNBC it expects a decision this summer.
Robinhood ended 2021 with 22.7 million net cumulative funded accounts, with more than 10 million of the accounts being added in 2021 alone. However, the latest quarter showed the broker lost monthly active users last quarter. Shares of Robinhood tumbled as much as 15% in after hours trading after the company gave a weak revenue forecast for the first quarter.
—With reporting by Tom Franck and Yun Li