European Trading Hours Face Calls for Modernization Amid Shifting Market Dynamics

Europe's rigid eight-and-a-half-hour trading window faces mounting criticism as institutional traders grapple with asynchronous liquidity patterns. Chris Collins of Lazard Asset Management highlights the structural mismatch—nearly 40% of continental volume now executes after US markets open, creating inefficiencies in price discovery.

Unlike US platforms experimenting with 24-hour retail access, European markets remain dominated by institutional flows. 'The current framework assumes all participants operate on the same clock,' Collins observes. 'That hasn't been true since electronic trading fragmented global liquidity pools.'

Proposed solutions include staggered openings for different asset classes and extended settlement windows. The debate mirrors crypto markets' evolution, where BTC and ETH trade continuously across global exchanges like Binance and Coinbase—a model traditional finance increasingly studies for competitiveness insights.