Markets
March 17, 2026
Wall Street rarely shifts its foundations this quickly. Within days, regulators and exchanges revealed two changes that could alter how markets function. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) earnings report change under discussion could ease one of the longest-standing disclosure rules. At the same time, Cboe is pushing trading hours into close to continuous territory.
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Cboe Files for Near Round-the-Clock Trading as SEC Kills Quarterly Reports
Cboe Global Markets has filed with the SEC to extend trading on its EDGX exchange to nearly 24 hours a day during the workweek. The proposal outlines a 24/5 schedule, running from Sunday 9 p.m. ET through Friday 8 p.m. ET, with short daily pauses. If approved, the rollout is targeted for December 2026.
The shift toward a stock market 24/5 model, or at least something close to it, has been building for a while. Cboe says early trading volumes have jumped 590% between 2022 and 2026. This shows a growing demand from global investors who don’t operate on US hours. As previously reported by BlockNow, broader markets have already shown how quickly pricing can shift when liquidity moves across time zones.
Oliver Sung, Head of North American Equities at Cboe, further said,
“Since announcing our plans for near 24×5 trading amid growing global interest for U.S. markets, we have been engaging with clients and market participants across the globe, underscoring the importance of collaboration throughout this process.”
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At the same time, regulators are moving in the opposite direction on disclosures. The SEC market structure for 2026 now includes a proposal that could effectively mean quarterly reports are scrapped. These would be replaced with semi-annual filings. The idea is to reduce compliance burdens and push longer-term thinking among public firms.
The cost side isn’t small either. Data from Audit Analytics shows companies already spend millions each year just on compliance and audit-related work tied to public filings. The average audit fees alone cross $2 million per SEC registrant. For smaller or newly listed firms, this is a big expense.
Still, less often reporting is not a clean win. Quarterly filings have been one of the few consistent ways investors track how firms are actually doing. Pushing that out to twice a year means there is simply more time where things can change without much visibility. This could be harsh on retail investors who aren’t sitting on private data feeds.
But both these developments are hard to miss. Trading is stretching across time zones, but the flow of official information is slowing down. The shift is not happening in isolation, with Nasdaq and NYSE putting the $126 trillion stock market on blockchain. Crypto markets have worked like this for years. Now the rest of the world seems to be inching toward the same direction.
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