Korea Exchange to Study Extending Trading Hours to 12 Hours
South Korea’s Korea Exchange (KRX) will form a working group to study extending daily trading hours to 12 hours by adding pre-market and post-market sessions. Proposed windows would extend trading from the current 09:00–15:30 main session (with an existing post-market 15:40–18:00) to either 07:00–19:00 or 08:00–20:00. The review aims to evaluate market structure changes, operational readiness and potential impacts on liquidity and investor access. No final decision or implementation timeline has been announced. Key topics likely to be assessed include trading-hour alignment with international markets, effects on volatility and liquidity, and infrastructure readiness for longer sessions.
Neutral
Extending exchange trading hours is primarily a market-structure and operational change rather than a direct monetary or regulatory shock. For crypto traders, the announcement is neutral overall: longer trading hours can improve access and potentially increase liquidity by spreading volume across more hours, which may reduce price gaps and overnight volatility. However, any benefits depend on actual uptake by market participants — if liquidity simply fragments across more hours, intraday spreads could widen in some periods. Historically, extensions of trading hours (or introduction of continuous trading) have had mixed short-term effects: initial increased activity and volatility as participants adjust, followed by gradual normalization and sometimes improved liquidity. In the short term expect intermittent volatility around implementation announcements and technical-testing periods. In the medium to long term, if KRX successfully aligns hours with international markets and ensures infrastructure readiness, the change could modestly enhance market depth and trading flexibility. Crypto markets may see minor indirect effects (e.g., correlated equity-crypto flows) rather than direct price moves to major tokens. Overall, the news is structural and not an immediate bullish or bearish catalyst for crypto prices.