Charles Schwab, a leader in investing and trading with $10.76 trillion in total client assets that facilitated 7.6 million daily average trades in Q2 2025, announced it has significantly expanded the list of securities available for trading overnight.

These extended + overnight session orders (EXTO) are continuous orders that expire at 8pm ET each market day. With this expansion, all Schwab retail clients can now trade more than 1,100 securities 24 hours a day, five days a week (24/5), via the thinkorswim platform suite. The newly added securities, which are primarily exchange-traded funds (ETFs), are among the most popular and have been added in response to client demand and in alignment with Schwab’s criteria for overnight trading.

Ameritrade, which was acquired by Schwab in 2020, pioneered 24/5 trading in 2018 as the first U.S. retail broker-dealer to make it available to traders, offering approximately two dozen ETFs in the overnight trading session. Schwab announced in February of this year that it had expanded the list of securities available in the overnight session to include the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 stocks, as well as hundreds of additional ETFs following a successful pilot of the expansion in Fall 2024.

“Since launching the broad availability of expanded overnight trading earlier this year, we have seen tremendous client engagement and received great feedback, and this further expansion is driven by what clients are telling us they want,” said James Kostulias, Managing Director and Head of Trading Services at Charles Schwab. “As the pace of interconnected global markets activity increases and market-moving news and events happen outside of regular U.S. market hours, 24-hour trading gives investors flexibility and access that can be critical to take advantage of potential opportunities – as well as helping to manage risk. When we think about the future of investing, the expansion of overnight trading is an important and exciting innovation, and you can expect Schwab to continue to be one of the leaders in this area going forward.”

Overnight Trading Uptake and Behavior

Since launching broad access to expanded overnight trading in February, Schwab has seen significant client engagement that continues to grow, with thousands of clients trading in the overnight session for the first time each week – a trend that’s notably pronounced among Schwab’s International clients.

Engagement with overnight trading appears to be directly correlated to major headlines in the news cycle. In April, likely in response to announcements or implementation of changes to tariff policy, Schwab clients engaged heavily in overnight trading, driving then-record trading volume overnight on April 7. That record was surpassed on June 12, when Schwab clients seemed to respond to reports of escalating tensions in the Middle East by trading a new record volume – more than twice the average nightly volume – in the overnight session.

The three names most traded by Schwab clients in the overnight session since February have been Tesla Inc. (TSLA), NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA), and Nio Inc. (NIO). Other highly traded symbols in the overnight session at Schwab have typically become more active following events like earnings reporting (MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, AMD), a significant news story (UNH), or as investors explore on-trend themes like Electric Vehicles (NIO) or the impact of artificial intelligence on industries like pharmaceutical discovery (RXRX).

These trends apply to Schwab’s domestic clients as well as international clients around the globe, although international clients have more actively traded NIO and RXRX than the general client population.

“We continue to see that trading behavior in the overnight session looks a lot like trading behavior during standard market hours, which is a good thing,” said Kostulias. “The same catalysts that drive retail investors to place trades during the day seem to influence their behavior at night, though with a considerable advantage in some cases where they can respond in real time where they were not able to in years past – or simply at a time that’s more convenient for their geography or lifestyle.”

Schwab clients can access 24/5 trading by selecting the EXTO order type for eligible securities on the thinkorswim trading platforms.

Source: Charles Schwab