One of the trends of 2013 was the increase of volumes of non-FX trading products among Forex brokers. As a result, many firms have been creating products to meet the rising non-FX demand, with CFDs, such as for bitcoins, emerging market securities, and commodities coming to market. Among leading brokers, both FXCM and Saxo Bank reported during 2013 that non-FX volumes were growing faster than FX, while GAIN Capital pointed out to its shareholders that among the benefits of its Acquisition of GFT was a massive expansion of tradable products.
Following on this trend, IG Group has announced an interesting feature for its US equity product during the coming earnings season. For this period, IG will be providing extended market hours for select shares. The extended trading hours will allow for customers to trade in reaction to earnings announcements that take place both before and after normal market sessions. It will be interesting to see how much demand the extended trading hours creates, as announcement from shares such as those of Apple, Google, and Amazon will take place after the US close, which will be after 9PM for the majority of their customers.
Among stocks that will be available for extended trading are Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, eBay, and Google. Commenting on the news in their public release, Brenda Kelly, Chief Market Strategist at IG stated, “We have already seen plenty of interest in this offering, with customers trading JP Morgan stocks out of hours ahead of today’s results, and we’re delighted to be the only provider able to offer extended hours trading on such a wide range of key US stocks. This new service is all part of our ongoing drive to make more markets more accessible.”
