Schwab Extends 24-Hour Trading to All Retail Clients via Thinkorswim

Charles Schwab has rolled out round-the-clock trading access to all its retail clients, allowing them to trade S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 stocks, along with hundreds of ETFs, 24 hours a day, five days a week.

The expansion, announced today from the firm's Westlake, Texas headquarters, follows a pilot programme that ran from November 2024 through January 2025. The service is available through Schwab's thinkorswim platform suite, with overnight session orders (EXTO) running until 8pm ET each market day.

"In today's world, market-moving news doesn't wait for standard market hours, and retail traders know what a difference it can make to have access to the markets when volatility spikes," said James Kostulias, Managing Director and Head of Trading Services at Charles Schwab.

The move represents a significant expansion of the overnight trading service first introduced by TD Ameritrade in 2018, which Schwab acquired in 2020. That initial offering was limited to approximately two dozen ETFs.

Data from the pilot programme revealed trading patterns similar to regular market hours, with peak activity between 8-9pm ET and 3-4am ET. The most actively traded stocks during the overnight session included Tesla, NVIDIA, Palantir Technologies, MicroStrategy, and Advanced Micro Devices.

"What we saw during the pilot period was that trading behaviour more or less mirrored what we typically see during standard market hours," Kostulias said. "Activity was the most pronounced at the beginning and end of the overnight session, similar to the behaviour we see during market open and close."

Schwab, which manages USD 10.10 trillion in total client assets and processes approximately six million trades daily, claims to handle about twice the daily trades of its nearest competitor that publicly shares such figures.

The expanded service is accessible to clients through the EXTO order type for eligible securities on the thinkorswim trading platforms.

Charles Schwab acquired the thinkorswim trading platform as part of its acquisition of TD Ameritrade, which was completed on October 6, 2020. The thinkorswim platform had originally been acquired by TD Ameritrade in January 2009 for approximately $606 million in a cash and stock deal. Thinkorswim, known for its advanced tools tailored to active traders, has become a key asset in Schwab's integration of TD Ameritrade's offerings. By May 2024, all TD Ameritrade accounts had been fully transitioned to Schwab.

On Monday TD Bank confirmed it is looking to offload its entire 10.1% stake in Charles Schwab.