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24 Exchange seeks SEC approval to offer round-the-clock stock trading 365 days a year

A startup trading platform is seeking approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch the first U.S. stock exchange that would operate around the clock, including on weekends and holidays.

The startup, 24 Exchange, said it filed key parts of its application for a national stock-exchange license with the SEC on Monday, including a rulebook and user manual detailing its proposed approach to trading hours.

Under decades-old conventions, the bulk of stock trading takes place between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET on weekdays, and exchanges shut down for holidays, such as Good Friday and Washington’s Birthday. In contrast, 24 Exchange would operate like the foreign-exchange and cryptocurrency markets, which run continuously.

The three-year-old startup already offers trading in FX and crypto. Its parent company, 24 Exchange Bermuda Ltd., is incorporated in Bermuda, but the proposed stock exchange would be run by a U.S. subsidiary.

24 Exchange is led by Dmitri Galinov, a two-decade veteran of electronic trading. In the 2000s, he worked at Credit Suisse Group AG and helped run the bank’s so-called dark pool for stock trades. After leaving the bank, he founded FastMatch Inc., a foreign-exchange trading venue that was acquired by exchange operator Euronext NV. Investors in 24 Exchange include international banking group Standard Chartered PLC.

In an interview, Mr. Galinov said there is growing demand for round-the-clock stock trading from individual investors. Not only do such investors often want to buy or sell stocks outside of standard trading hours, but the 24/7 nature of crypto has raised expectations that stocks should work the same way, he said.

“If there is big news over the weekend, you can try to trade, but you really can’t,” the founder and chief executive said.

Currently, investors can trade as early as 4 a.m. ET and as late as 8 p.m. ET, thanks to premarket and post-market trading sessions offered by the New York Stock Exchange and other market operators. Because of thin liquidity, though, prices in these sessions tend to be volatile. And while TD Ameritrade offers 24-hour trading five days a week in a limited number of securities, investors are largely unable to trade overnight or during weekends.

Mr. Galinov said 24 Exchange would also serve international investors looking to trade U.S. stocks. Overseas market operators, including the Moscow Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India, have launched or announced initiatives to allow local investors to trade U.S. stocks, he noted.

24 Exchange is also seeking the SEC’s permission to allow fractional trading on its proposed stock exchange in increments of as little as 1/1000th of a share.

Brokerages such as Fidelity Investments and Robinhood Markets Inc. allow fractional trading, an increasingly popular way for individual investors to own small slices of stocks with a high price per share, such as Amazon.com Inc. But, unlike brokers, exchanges handle transactions involving whole numbers of shares.

There is no guarantee that the SEC will approve 24 Exchange’s plan or that its proposed stock exchange will succeed, even if it gets the regulator’s green light.

The startup must still complete its exchange application, a process that could take weeks. At that point, the application will be published, and the SEC will seek public comment, a step that will provide an opportunity for established Wall Street players to criticize the proposal and urge changes.

It will likely be well into 2022 before the SEC issues its final decision on whether to approve or reject 24 Exchange’s application. An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment.

James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University, predicted that 24 Exchange would face an uphill battle to attract trading activity outside of standard U.S. trading hours. That could result in volatile pricing, like in the premarket and post-market sessions available today, he said.

“Personally I would love it if there was 24-hour trading,” Mr. Angel said. “But I doubt there will be much liquidity.”

24 Exchange’s plans could also draw opposition from Wall Street because professional traders at banks and large investment firms like the ability to relax and go home after the market closes, Mr. Angel said.

U.S. stock-trading hours have been set from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET since 1985, when the NYSE, the American Stock Exchange and the forerunner of Nasdaq Inc. moved the market’s opening time from 10 a.m. ET to half an hour earlier. The NYSE and other exchanges made that move, in part, to accommodate growing European interest in trading U.S. stocks.

Internal documents reveal years-long decline in younger users in the US

Facebook has misled investors about the size of its audience and concealed a years-long decline in younger users in the US, said Frances Haugen, a whistleblower, in a complaint to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The drop in younger users continued even during the coronavirus pandemic, when overall social media use surged. “During Covid, every cohort’s use of Facebook increased, except for those 23 and under, which continued to decline,” the complaint said.

Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, pointed to internal company projections that a drop in engagement from American teens could drive an overall decline in its US daily users by as much as 45 per cent between 2021 and 2023.

The latest allegations that Facebook “misrepresented” its “reach and frequency” metrics form one of eight complaints filed to the SEC, which were first reported by CBS News.

Lawyers for Haugen cite internal company documents dating back several years to support the whistleblower’s allegations of “material misrepresentations and omissions” to investors, including through SEC filings and testimony to US Congress.

The data scientist, who worked at Facebook until May, will appear before US senators in Washington on Tuesday after a series of damning interviews on CBS’s 60 Minutes and the Wall Street Journal, engulfing Facebook in its biggest reputational crisis for years. The social network also suffered a significant outage on Monday, with all of its platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram, going offline for several hours.

In letters to the SEC written by Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit legal organisation that has identified itself as representing Haugen, Facebook was also accused of failing to take action against extremism, hate speech, human trafficking and ethnic violence on its apps, including Instagram.

The complaint about Facebook’s reach said that “for years, Facebook has misrepresented core metrics to investors and advertisers including the amount of content produced on its platforms and growth in individual users”, especially in “high-value demographics” such as American teenagers.

“By delivering too many ads to users that the advertisers did not want to pay for, Facebook overcharged advertisers on a vast scale,” the complaint said.

Haugen’s legal team cited internal Facebook records showing that more than 15 per cent of new accounts created by teenagers are secondary or duplicates. Facebook usage among young adults aged 18 to 24 “continues to decline”, according to excerpts from internal documents in the SEC filing, while young adults “spend less time, produce less and send fewer messages” on the social network.

Jason Kint, head of Digital Content Next, a trade body representing online publishers, and a persistent Facebook critic, said in a series of tweets that the allegations were “deadly” and “incredibly damning”.

Facebook is already fighting a class-action lawsuit in California over claims that its estimates of advertisers’ “potential reach” included duplicate and fake accounts. Earlier this year, court filings showed that Carolyn Everson, then one of Facebook’s top advertising executives, warned colleagues to “prepare for the worst” over the claims. Everson resigned from Facebook in June.

Facebook has previously argued that estimates of potential reach are a “planning tool” and do not form the basis of advertisers’ billings.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the whistleblower’s SEC complaints. Facebook has described Haugen’s range of allegations against it as “misleading”.

“Protecting our community is more important than maximising our profits,” Lena Pietsch, Facebook’s director of policy communications, said in a statement on Sunday following the 60 Minutes broadcast.

From Dr John Law and others - Our best-read letter of the last week

Your article highlighted the disillusionment of young Germans with political parties that are failing to meet their needs on climate protection — even with the Greens (Opinion, September 24). They are right to be anxious.

The country’s emissions are rising sharply again, at a time when they need to be falling fast. In 2021, they are forecast to stand at only 37 per cent below the 1990 baseline level, still 3 per cent short of the 2020 target of a 40 per cent reduction (which has in effect been missed). Delays are also being experienced to the rollout of renewables and transmission line construction, while the recent steep rise in the price of natural gas is encouraging more coal burning. So its next goal for 2030, of a 65 per cent cut, looks in serious jeopardy.

Yet Germany is not taking full advantage of all possibilities. The elephant in the room is its move to carbonise its electricity system. By 2022, it will have shut down two decades ahead of time its remaining six nuclear reactors. This withdrawal of a huge 8 gigawatts of low-carbon power generation, presently meeting 10 per cent of national daytime demand, will lead to around 60m tonnes of additional carbon emissions each year, as it is compelled to burn more fossil fuels to deliver the replacement power. This will boost national emissions by 5 per cent on the 1990 baseline.

There is still time to set matters straight. Germany could yet alter course and adjust its order of priority to exit coal before nuclear. All it would take is the stroke of a pen to reinstate the former life extensions, agreed in 2010, to the plants to between 2030 and 2036.

Is any politician brave enough to implement this concrete change that would unequivocally make a positive impact upon emissions, at what is a critical moment in the climate crisis? This emergency action — a postponement of the nuclear exit, not a cancellation — would rightfully earn the respect of the younger generation.

Dr John Law

Founder, Clean Energy Revolution

Prof Steven Pinker

Harvard University

Mark Lynas

Author and Environmentalist

Dr James Hansen

Columbia University, New York

George Monbiot

Author and Environmentalist

Prof Wade Allison

University of Oxford

Prof Joshua Goldstein

American University, Washington, DC

Malcolm Grimston

Imperial College London

Rauli Partanen

Founder, Think Atom

Robert Stone

Documentary Film-maker

Prof Gerry Thomas

Imperial College London

He Axe-ed himself from the show.

After an electrifying five seasons, Damian Lewis is stepping away from his role as venal finance titan Bobby Axelrod on Showtime’s “Billions.” The bombshell comes after showrunners announced that the financial drama’s Season 6 will premiere on Jan. 23, 2022. The network also released a minutelong teaser trailer.

“What an incredible joy to spend five years working so closely with the great @lewis_damian!” tweeted “Billions” executive producer Brian Koppelman following the 50-year-old actor’s departure. “@DavidLevien and I are beyond grateful to you, Damian, for the work, of course, and the fellowship, and for all you sacrificed to come do this with us.”

The Emmy winner’s ride into the sunset dovetailed with Axelrod’s adieu on the show. At the end of the Season 5 finale, which was titled “No Direction Home” and aired Sunday, the hedge fund shark was on the lam in Switzerland after duping New York Attorney General Chuck Rhoades (Emmy winner Paul Giamatti) by relinquishing his assets to rival billionaire Michael Prince (Corey Stoll).

The final episode concluded with the tycoon admitting defeat, musing, “Wow. So this is what it is to lose.”

And while the conclusion was left somewhat open-ended, Lewis said his fan-favorite character had closed his account for the foreseeable future.

“There’s an opportunity maybe for me to return,” the “Band of Brothers” actor told the New York Times of his exit. “But for now, broadly speaking, Axe has been vanquished.”

The dismaying TV announcement comes on the heels of a personal tragedy: Lewis’ wife, the acclaimed “Peaky Blinders” actress Helen McCrory, passed away from cancer at the age of 52 this past April during the production of the fifth season.

The coronavirus pandemic also forced Showtime to postpone Season 5 by a whole year, eventually releasing it in two parts. In fact, the “Homeland” alum shot large stretches of the season’s latter half from his UK home due to COVID concerns.

It’s unclear what the “Billions” sixth season will entail; however, a recent teaser suggested that Rhoades will now go toe to toe with Prince for ruining his chance to put Axe in prison.

Beijing’s streak of sorties in recent days began as U.S., U.K. and others conducted large-scale exercises east of Taiwan

TAIPEI—China’s military flew 56 sorties near Taiwan, including flights by a dozen bombers, from the predawn hours into the night Monday, intensifying a streak in recent days following the arrival of an armada east of the island comprising ships from the U.S., U.K. and four other countries.

The People’s Liberation Army flights, which also included J-16 jet fighters and Y-8 submarine-spotting aircraft, followed 93 military sorties over the previous three days, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, which tracks PLA activities near the island daily.

Over the weekend, 17 warships conducted training exercises in the air and on the sea southwest of Okinawa, not far from Taiwan, according to a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force statement Monday.

Two U.S. carrier strike groups, the Carl Vinson and Ronald Reagan, were in the Philippine Sea before the blitz of PLA sorties began Friday. U.S. defense officials said both took part in the joint exercises over the weekend.

Taiwan’s government, which said the PLA had been conducting “large-scale intrusion exercises” in the maritime and airspace around Taiwan, demanded a stop to the behavior. It said Taiwan would defend its sovereignty and that the government was cooperating with unspecified countries to contain what it called malicious provocations by the Chinese Communist Party.

In Washington, the White House said the U.S. is concerned about China’s actions, saying it is “destabilizing, risks miscalculations and undermines regional peace and stability.”

“We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan and we have an abiding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” press secretary Jen Psaki said.

The U.S. will continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability, Ms. Psaki said, adding, “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock solid.” Besides airing objections publicly, Ms. Psaki said U.S. officials are privately communicating the message to Beijing.

In an article for Foreign Policy magazine published Tuesday, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen portrayed the island as a bulwark for democracy in the region and warned of the consequences should Beijing succeed in its long-held goal of seizing control of the island.

“If Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system,” she wrote.

The PLA’s flight paths were in a zone that isn’t part of Taiwan’s airspace but that the island monitors for potential foreign incursions. Taipei claims as its airspace the 12 nautical miles out from its coast.

The timing of the deployment coincided with a weeklong holiday that began with National Day on Oct. 1 in China. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office didn’t respond to request for comment.

In a response to the U.S. State Department expressing concern over the weekend about Chinese military activity near Taiwan, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry reasserted Beijing’s claim over Taiwan and urged Washington to stop sending “extremely wrong and irresponsible signals to the outside world.” Taiwan is a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its territory and has vowed to take by military force if necessary.

Without citing the PLA’s recent activity near Taiwan or the fleet of ships in the Philippine Sea, the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said China reserves the right to take countermeasures to U.S. moves to strengthen military ties with Taiwan, including arms sales and U.S. military plane visits to the island, as well as U.S. warships crossing the Taiwan Strait.

Pentagon officials rejected Beijing’s criticisms, saying that its Navy is operating legally and that the exercises aren’t aimed at any one country but serve to bolster freedom of navigation in the region.

Military scholars and China experts say the PLA’s advances, its largest such show of force in the past year near Taiwan, are aimed at trying to deter Western powers that have sent naval carriers to the region, as well as at intimidating Taipei.

“It’s incredibly provocative and dangerous,” said Ian Easton, senior director at Project 2049 Institute, a U.S.-based nonprofit research organization that focuses on the Indo-Pacific region. He said he wouldn’t rule out a number of possible reasons for Beijing’s actions, including a direct response to potential U.S. activity in the Western Pacific, or a large-scale exercise that is part of preparations for an invasion of Taiwan one day.

“There’s a lot of opacity when it comes to Taiwan, and that increases the chances of a crisis or miscalculation,” he said.

Mr. Easton and other scholars expressed concern about the number of strategic bombers, which countries often use for political signaling. The U.S. has sent bombers near China and North Korea in the past but usually sends one or two such aircraft.

China’s H-6 bombers can be equipped with long-range missiles, so Beijing is showing it is capable of large-scale and long-distance combat, including its ability to threaten major air bases on Taiwan’s east coast, according to Shu Hsiao-huang, a research fellow at the Taiwanese military-backed Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

In an unusual maneuver, the PLA began its flights at 3 a.m. on Monday, according to local media citing a social media account belonging to a Taiwanese military retiree who monitors military scanners. The PLA continued into the night, by sending four J-16 jet fighters after dark, according to Taiwan’s air force.

Chang Yan-ting, a former vice air marshal for Taiwan’s air force, said the PLA appears to be trying to improve its ability to engage in combat in the dark. “Improving on night combat means it’s close to being able to engage in actual combat,” he said.

The PLA has ramped up its presence around Taiwan over the past year, amid closer ties between Taipei and Washington. Military analysts say China’s activities have been an effective way to grind down Taiwan’s Air Force, which has to scramble its own jets.

At the same time, the U.S. Navy has stepped up freedom-of-navigation operations in and around the Taiwan Strait, with sailings by other Western nations including France and the U.K. as well.

U.S. defense officials confirmed that the Carl Vinson and Ronald Reagan conducted joint exercises with the U.K. and Japan over the weekend. They were joined by vessels from the Netherlands, Canada and New Zealand, according to the Japanese navy.

The Japan-based Ronald Reagan returned from the Persian Gulf where it was supporting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Carl Vinson arrived in the Pacific while the Ronald Reagan was away from the region.

The PLA has flown more than 800 sorties of warplanes near Taiwan over the past year, according to a Wall Street Journal tally of the activity based on figures from Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, which began releasing such data on Sept. 16, 2020. Most of the aircraft were dispatched this year.