World's First Pre-Market Options Trading
Longbridge Securities has launched what it calls the world's first platform for pre-market trading of U.S. options. The move is designed to help global investors react to overnight news and get ahead of market movements before the official open.
The new pre-market U.S. options trading service from Longbridge operates from 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. This window is particularly aimed at investors in Asia and Europe, allowing them to react to overnight news and earnings reports during their normal waking hours, rather than in the middle of the night. Historically, pre-market sessions have been the domain of institutional investors, but this launch represents a significant push to provide retail traders with similar capabilities. To mitigate the inherent risks of lower liquidity and potentially higher volatility common in these early hours, Longbridge is initially offering options on only highly liquid U.S. stocks and ETFs, such as QQQ, SPY, AAPL, and TSLA. From a technology perspective, providing this service requires a robust infrastructure capable of managing risk in a less liquid environment. Longbridge highlights its fully self-developed risk control system and a streamlined two-step workflow for order execution directly from the options chain. The firm also employs an AI-powered financial assistant to help users analyze market data, a tool intended to bridge the information gap between retail and professional traders. This move is part of a larger trend towards expanding trading hours, with a long-term goal of enabling continuous, 24-hour U.S. options trading. The service is being introduced with an initial offer of zero commission and zero platform fees to encourage adoption. Longbridge holds 22 financial licenses globally, with its Singapore entity regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
