AINEWS
The 2024 overnight trading approval was a joint statement from SEC commissioners Hester Peirce and Caroline Crenshaw. Sept. 17 forum follows Crenshaw's exit, leaving Peirce as the only original signatory still on the commission.
In 2024, two SEC commissioners signed off on overnight trading. Caroline Crenshaw, one of them, is no longer at the agency. That makes the Sept. 17 roundtable a public process on a precedent whose coalition is one signature shorter than 18 months ago, and the comment file under File Number 4-913 is where the new direction will show up.
The SEC announced on Wednesday that it will convene a public roundtable on Sept. 17, 2026, to discuss preparations for 24-hour trading in U.S. equity markets. The stated scope is operational: how exchanges, brokers, and clearing and settlement systems would adapt to a market that never closes, and how investor and customer protections would carry over to overnight hours.
Chairman Paul S. Atkins framed the move with a line that doubles as a public signal: "We are moving towards a new day – and night – in the U.S. equity markets." He paired that with the agency's standing caveat that any expansion must balance round-the-clock trading with investor protections.
The mechanism the press release does not name is personnel. The roundtable is the SEC's first formal public process on the 24-hour trading file since the November 2024 order approving 24X, the proposed overnight national exchange. That order was not a commission-wide vote or formal rulemaking. It was a two-commissioner joint statement from Hester Peirce and Caroline Crenshaw. Crenshaw is no longer in office. The 2024 precedent is still on the books, but the coalition that produced it is one signature shorter today.
That narrows the on-record signal going into September. Atkins is the only commissioner with on-record comment tied to the roundtable announcement. As of the SEC's speeches and statements index, neither Peirce nor Mark Uyeda has posted a separate statement on the 24-hour-trading roundtable. The press release is Atkins-only, and the public record reflects that.
The durable lever for non-Wall-Street readers is the comment file, not the speaker roster. The agency has opened public comment under File Number 4-913. Comments can be filed electronically via the SEC's internet comment form or sent to rule-comments@sec.gov; paper comments go to Secretary Vanessa Countryman at SEC headquarters, 100 F Street NE, Washington, D.C. Every comment is posted online without redaction, which means the file becomes a public ledger of who said what before any rule is drafted.
The roundtable itself will be open to the public and held at SEC headquarters, with a livestream on SEC.gov and a recording posted afterward. In-person attendance is subject to security screening and may be limited. The agenda and speaker lineup are still to be determined.
The next move will show which path the agency is taking: a fresh joint statement from the sitting commissioners would restate the precedent under the current commission, while silence on substance and continued reliance on the 4-913 comment file would leave the 2024 order intact and let the public record grow around it.