What MOON ATS Is Revealing About the Future of Overnight Trading
Market participants have long viewed overnight trading as the future state for global equities. After years of struggling to gain traction, the narrative began to shift over the last year.
Now, one year after MOON ATS came to market, Exegy sat down with OTC Markets Group to look back at what has changed and what a year of real overnight trading activity is revealing about investor behavior, market structure, and the path toward more continuous trading models.
For OTC Markets Group, the launch of MOON ATS represented both a commitment to participating in the continuous trading landscape and a recognition of growing global market demand. As overnight trading has moved from concept to reality, the past year has provided a clearer view into how participation is taking shape, where momentum is building, and which assumptions about overnight markets are beginning to hold.
Why Global Investor Demand is Driving Overnight Trading
OTC Markets Group operates the US over-the-counter equity market, giving US and international investors access to more than 12,000 global securities not listed on US exchanges. Its markets support a wide range of companies, from some of the world’s most prominent international names to early-stage growth firms looking to reach US investors.
That global focus has only grown stronger. In 2025, trading activity on OTC Markets rose 44.5% YoY to $691 billion, primarily driven by international securities. And as participation spreads to other regions, expectations around 24/5 trading are beginning to shift. Investors are starting to see continuous access to US markets as table stakes, not a differentiator.
From a market-structure perspective, the signal was hard to miss. Investors in APAC and Europe increasingly wanted to trade US securities during their own local market hours. MOON ATS meets that demand by enabling transparent overnight price discovery for U.S.-listed stocks and OTC securities between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. ET.
What OTC Markets Group is seeing aligns closely with broader industry trends Exegy has observed. As outlined in Exegy’s 2026 Capital Markets Outlook, retail investors continue to lead overnight and extended-hours activity, with growing demand from APAC and European markets pushing brokers to support execution beyond the traditional US trading session. That sustained retail participation is increasingly laying the groundwork for broader institutional involvement.
Why Overnight Trading Feels Different This Time?
Earlier attempts at overnight trading often failed due to a lack of consistent participation. What’s different now is not just technology, but attitude.
The rise of commission-free mobile trading removed friction and opened equity markets to billions of individuals who previously lacked access. At the same time, investor expectations have shifted.
The most significant indicator is in the data. Since late 2025, overnight participation has shown up consistently, proving the market is moving from experimentation to adoption.
What a Year of Live Activity Reveals
In its first year of operation, MOON ATS saw retail brokers and liquidity providers lead early participation, which aligned with expectations. What stands out is the pace of trading activity growth in the latter half of 2025.
From early September through year-end, average daily notional activity on MOON ATS increased by more than 200%, with trade counts and share volume rising at a similar rate. Activity stepped up following the opening of the Korean market in November and continued to build in December as broader global participation came online. That momentum has continued into the new year, with MOON ATS reaching new all-time highs in activity at the beginning of 2026, reinforcing that overnight trading is becoming a sustained, rather than seasonal, feature of the market.
How Global Markets Are Responding
The growth of overnight trading has not gone unnoticed outside the US exchanges, and broker-dealers globally are increasingly aware of the momentum building around extended-hours equity trading.
While retail investor participation outside the US has historically lagged in both involvement and sophistication, that gap is narrowing quickly. A new generation of investors is entering global markets without the same attachment to traditional trading windows. For them, 24/5 trading isn’t an innovation; it’s simply how markets should work.
What Operational Challenges Are Firms Facing with Overnight Trading?
Supporting overnight trading has presented challenges, but they have been less about technology and more about operations. Extending trading hours requires changes to staffing models, coverage, and internal coordination, and those shifts take time for firms to implement responsibly.
Momentum in late 2025 began to shift that mindset. And with ATS’s like MOON reaching new all-time highs at the beginning of 2026, more firms have started planning coverage and resources accordingly, prompting teams to allocate resources, adjust coverage models, and prepare for overnight trading as something that needs to be supported day to day.
Operational readiness is now beginning to catch up with demand. As a result, overnight markets are becoming easier for a broader set of participants to engage with, clearing one of the biggest hurdles to continued adoption.
How Market Data Supports Confidence in Overnight Trading
Market data has played a central role in making overnight trading viable. For participants evaluating overnight opportunities, data provides visibility into activity, pricing behavior, and execution quality when traditional benchmarks don’t apply.
Equally important is the accumulation of historical overnight data. As that record grows, prospective participants gain confidence in assessing market behavior and making informed decisions about entry. From an end-investor perspective, high-quality data underpins both execution confidence and trust in the market itself.
The Future of Continuous Markets
Despite the progress of the past year, overnight trading is still early. But its direction is no longer in question. A large global investor base has yet to engage fully, and as that participation accelerates, liquidity will follow.
Adoption is already driving change. Infrastructure, analytics, and operating models are evolving in step as firms prepare to support overnight markets more completely. This evolution includes everything from trading and liquidity provision to data access and downstream consumption.
Here at Exegy, support for MOON ATS within Axiom is already in development, with deployment expected later in Q1. This addition reflects apparent demand from firms looking to integrate overnight data into their existing workflows.
One year in, the conclusion from MOON ATS is clear. Overnight trading is no longer a trend of the future; It’s becoming an operational reality for global equity markets, shaped by global participation and sustained behavior maturing around it.
