Just last week, the CFE announced it would extend trading hours for its VIX Futures contract. Now on Monday, the Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing (HKEx) will expand trading hours for some of its key products.
This comes after it also?disclosed plans?last month to revamp its stock options market in a wide variety of areas thanks to its growing interest.
Beginning on Monday, the exchange’s?Hang Seng Index (HSI) Futures and the?H-shares Index (HHI) Futures Trading will now trade from 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm. An exchange spokesman said to Financial News of the change, “We see investors? need to manage their market exposure in response to news and events during the European and US business day as the financial market becomes more globalised.?
For HKEx, it joins a growing trend by exchanges to extend trading hours on some of their popular products. Rival Shanghai Futures Exchange is looking at potentially longer trading hours for its spot gold and silver contracts while in April, Israel?s Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (Tase) will extend trading times for its derivatives and shares. This comes in alignment with daylight savings time in the U.S. and Europe.
Ester Levanon, Tase?s chief executive, said to Financial News of the extended trading hours, ?Over the last two years we have seen diminishing trading volumes. Some of this can be attributed to the general economic situation, but we decided to look again at extending hours and we noticed that in the five or so weeks a year that we are aligned with the US and Europe because of daylight saving, the volumes increased dramatically, by 15% in March last year and 30% in October.?
Then there’s the CME Group Inc. (NASDAQ:CME). While some exchanges are expanding hours, the CME is cutting back beginning on Monday.?
This comes from customer feedback that hours were too long, resulting in an erosion of liquidity. Now 21 hours of electronic trading on the Chicago Board of Trade has been cut?down to 17.5 hours.?
Products affected includes?CBOT Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, Soybean Meal, Soybean Oil, Rough Rice, Oats, and KCBT Wheat futures and options as well as related CBOT and KCBT calendar spread options and inter-commodity spread options.
At the time of this announced change,?Tim Andriesen, Managing Director,?Agricultural Commodities?and Alternative Investments, CME Group said, “While there were varying opinions about what the modifications to hours should be, we believe these changes balance the needs of our diverse global customers based on their feedback.”
CME is not alone in thinking less trading hours is more.?
Lynton Jones, chairman of exchange consultancy Bourse Consult, said to Financial News, ?I am sceptical about the value of extending trading hours to attract global investors. The problem is that, for all the talk of us living in a global market, the fact is that we live in a collection of interconnected local markets.?