> Why can't I as a regular retail investor trade a stock on Saturday?
Having worked in the industry for some years: because it's always been that way, and because the people who make financial systems are lazy and bad at their jobs and don't want to admit they were wrong.
It's happening, very slowly, just yesterday I was reading about "the first 24/7 stock exchange" making another filing or something. But the financial industry is conservative and most users are happy for it to be - sure they'll talk about how they want their bank to have a better online service, but they'll keep banking at the big four names they recognise rather than the upstarts that offer better service.
> Imagine not being able to send E-mail on Easter because nobody at your ISP was there to push bits around or whatever these banks' excuse is?
Here in Japan a lot of government systems work like that.
In the last 25 years I have seen the expansion of trading hours as well the reduction of trading hours in some markets. It really comes down to demand. Currently, the demand for 24x7 is more retail than institutional which shapes whatever will be on offer (some instis have interest, but for at least some that have interest I could imagine they are eyeing new inefficiencies/opportunities from that).
Sorry to hear you've worked in such a depressing part of the industry. I've worked with some incredibly motivated and talented people and this is not my impression at all.
Still, it's an old, large and hugely complex interconnected system made up of literally thousands of banks employing millions of people and several regulatory bodies run by different federal and state administrations.
Such interconnected systems/networks are notoriously hard to evolve, especially given that, as you also noted, people are often extremely conservative when it comes to their life savings. I don't think it's fair to blame the people working in the industry for all of that or even call them lazy.
> I've worked with some incredibly motivated and talented people and this is not my impression at all.
I worked with some incredibly motivated and talented people too - and saw many of them ground down as basic improvements took literally years to make it through in watered-down form, if they even saw the light of day at all. I was actually amazed by how few people in the financial industry are incompetent in the "couldn't write fizzbuzz" sense, but there seems to be a big-picture insularity where stuff that would be basic and common sense in every other industry (e.g. automated CI) is just not done.
Having worked in the industry for some years: because it's always been that way, and because the people who make financial systems are lazy and bad at their jobs and don't want to admit they were wrong.
It's happening, very slowly, just yesterday I was reading about "the first 24/7 stock exchange" making another filing or something. But the financial industry is conservative and most users are happy for it to be - sure they'll talk about how they want their bank to have a better online service, but they'll keep banking at the big four names they recognise rather than the upstarts that offer better service.
> Imagine not being able to send E-mail on Easter because nobody at your ISP was there to push bits around or whatever these banks' excuse is?
Here in Japan a lot of government systems work like that.