Markets Are Moving Beyond the Close. Can Their Infrastructure Follow?

When I entered the financial-markets industry nearly thirty years ago, I was 22, a Kiwi in London working on LIFFE Connect and saving to travel before returning home to join the police. That plan did not survive contact with the markets. I became absorbed by the technology and infrastructure that make them work, and by people around me who were equally fascinated by these markets as I was. 

Since then, I have worked with exchanges around the world, served on exchange boards and spent much of my career on the vendor side of market infrastructure. I have watched trading floors become electronic markets, direct market access reshape participation, independent software vendors bring markets together, settlement cycles shorten and clearing assume an even more central role in financial stability. 

Each change initially appeared to be about one part of the market. Each ultimately required the wider ecosystem to adapt. I believe we are approaching another of those moments. 

The Market Day is Losing its Edges 

For decades, market infrastructure followed a dependable rhythm. Markets opened and closed. Positions were marked to market. Margin was calculated. Trades were reconciled. Maintenance was scheduled. The cycle began again each morning. 

Much of post-trade infrastructure, from variation margin and collateral cycles to participant monitoring and default management, was organised around that daily heartbeat. It was not poor design. It reflected the market it was built to serve. 

Risk, of course, never observed the same timetable. Positions carry overnight. Collateral values move. Geopolitical events unfold without warning. One jurisdiction opens while another sleeps. Risk has always been continuous (most definitely continuously thought about); the industry simply built infrastructure that observed and managed it periodically. 

The difference now is that the market day itself is becoming less distinct. Crypto markets have traded continuously for years. In November 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the registration of 24X National Exchange, including provision for an overnight session. On 10 April 2026, it approved Nasdaq’s proposal to extend trading to 23 hours a day, five days a week. On 29 June, DTCC announced that the National Securities Clearing Corporation had gone live with 24×5 clearing hours. 

Not every market will, or should, trade continuously. Liquidity does not improve simply because it is spread across more hours. But the direction is clear: the traditional close is becoming a less dependable organising principle for market operations.

A Market is More Than its Matching Engine 

As discussion of extended trading gathers pace, I find myself thinking less about whether a matching engine can remain available and more about what must happen underneath it when it does. 

A trading platform may be capable of operating for 23 hours. But as Nandini Sukumar, CEO of the World Federation of Exchanges, has said: “Any shift must be ecosystem-wide, coordinated across custodians, settlement banks, brokers, and regulators.” 

Clearing, settlement, funding, payments, collateral management, surveillance and operational support each have their own dependencies and operating windows. 

When does end-of-day reconciliation happen if there is no meaningful end of day? When can an exchange deploy upgrades or test recovery procedures without a natural pause? How are margin calls and collateral movements managed when trading continues but conventional payment and funding systems are unavailable? 

The problem, then, is not simply continuous trading. It is continuous exposure in an ecosystem where liquidity, collateral and risk visibility may still move in discrete steps.

Continuous Risk is an Operating Model 

Default management makes the tension especially clear. It depends on knowing a participant’s positions, collateral and exposure when a default is declared. In a continuously moving market, that book may never be still. 

Technology can give decision-makers more current information, but it cannot remove the need for accountable authority. Someone must be able to declare a default and initiate a closeout outside conventional operating hours. This is therefore not only a systems question. It is also a question of governance, staffing, permissions and decision-making. 

That distinction matters. Continuous risk management does not necessarily mean replacing every established risk model, nor does it mean recalculating every position every millisecond. Exchanges and CCPs already possess sophisticated models and deep specialist in-house expertise. The more immediate gap often sits around the calculation: fragmented workflows, manual intervention, periodic reporting and limited visibility for management or participants. 

A technically sound model cannot deliver its full value if its outputs are difficult to see, govern or act upon. Continuous risk operations mean treating risk as a live operational state: using thresholds and alerts to identify material change, controlled workflows to govern the response, audit trails to make action visible, and appropriate transparency so participants understand their own positions and potential liquidity demands. 

Risk models calculate. A resilient operating model helps people see, understand and act. 

Modernisation Should Not Mean Starting Again 

For much of the past decade, our industry has framed modernisation as a choice between retaining legacy infrastructure and replacing it with a new platform. I am no longer convinced that is the most useful question. 

Market infrastructures cannot undertake a five-year transformation programme every time trading patterns, risk practices or regulatory expectations evolve. Nor should they discard systems, models and institutional knowledge that continue to perform essential functions. 

A more practical approach is progressive modernisation: introduce focused capabilities alongside the core, solve a defined operational problem, demonstrate value and expand where the market requires it. That might begin with exposure monitoring, collateral visibility, margin workflows, management information or participant reporting. The objective is not novelty. It is better market operation with proportionate change and controlled execution risk. 

This is where modularity matters, not as a technology slogan, but as an operating philosophy. Infrastructure should be able to evolve without forcing the institution to start again.

The Industry Needs Scale and Specialisation 

Large market-technology providers have made an enormous contribution to the development and resilience of global markets. Large FMI providers bring broad platforms, scale and experience across complex enterprise environments. That capability will remain essential. 

But not every problem requires the breadth of a major platform programme, and not every useful innovation will emerge on the timetable of a large product roadmap. Market infrastructure also benefits from smaller specialist firms that can concentrate strong technology and deep domain knowledge on a specific operational gap. 

The distinction should not become a simplistic contest between large and small. It is about assembling the right capabilities: scale where scale is required; focus where a problem needs close attention; and architecture that allows the two to coexist. A specialist provider should be able to complement established infrastructure, work collaboratively with the institution and its incumbent partners, and deliver change without asking the market to absorb unnecessary complexity. 

That approach is relevant at both ends of the spectrum. Emerging markets can develop new capability without inheriting the cost and rigidity of a monolithic environment. Mature exchanges and CCPs can address specific gaps while protecting the infrastructure and expertise they already trust. 

Innovation Should Begin with the Market 

Building software is becoming faster. Understanding markets is not. As artificial intelligence accelerates development, knowledge of clearing, regulation, participant behaviour and operational responsibility will become more valuable, not less. 

The best modernisation programmes begin with the market: how it operates, who participates, what obligations it carries and where the genuine friction sits. Technology enters only after those questions are understood. When the process starts with a platform, the market can be asked to absorb requirements, cost and complexity it never needed. 

That conviction has shaped our work at Avenir Technology. AvenirOne and AvenirRisk reflect an effort to address defined market-infrastructure pain points through modular technology that can work with established environments, teams and systems. I mention them not because every institution needs the same product, but because product design should be evidence of a philosophy: start with the market, preserve what works and focus innovation where it can improve how people operate. 

Every major evolution I have witnessed in this industry has required more than a new system. Electronic trading changed participation and market structure. Central clearing changed how counterparty risk is managed. Shorter settlement cycles required coordinated change across institutions, processes and behaviour. 

The next evolution will be no different. The institutions that thrive will not necessarily be those with the longest trading hours or the newest platforms. They will be those that can see, understand and respond to risk as it evolves, and whose infrastructure can change without losing the resilience, expertise and trust on which their markets depend. 

The closing bell may continue to ring for tradition. Market infrastructure can no longer depend on it. 

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About Avenir Technology 

Avenir Technology is a specialist financial market infrastructure technology and advisory firm. We work with exchanges, clearing houses, regulators and market participants to solve practical trading, clearing, risk and operational problems. Alongside our AvenirOne and AvenirRisk technology, we provide advisory services grounded in our team’s experience building, operating, and supporting markets worldwide.