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The Board of Directors of Oslo Børs decided at a meeting held on 27 February to extend the opening hours for the Oslo Børs equities and derivatives markets by one hour to 17.30. The change is planned to come into effect on 1 September 2008.
The decision to extend opening hours has been made to strengthen the exchange's competitiveness. An important factor is to extend the period of overlap with the opening hours of the US markets, and so make trading in the exchange's products more available for international investors. Moreover, the implementation of the EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) on 1 November 2007 paves the way for greater competition between exchanges, and this makes it strategically important for Oslo Børs to extend its opening hours. Oslo Børs therefore considers it important to harmonise its opening hours with other European stock markets. The majority of European markets, including all the main centres, are currently open for trading between 09.00 – 17.30 CET.
Based on experience from the extension of opening hours implemented in January 2006, Oslo Børs expects the change to have a positive effect in market turnover. Longer opening hours are also expected to reduce market volatility since there will be greater opportunity for market pricing to respond to international developments during the trading day rather than at the start of trading on the following day. By way of example, figures for oil stocks in the USA are announced at 16.30, which at the moment is after Oslo Børs has closed.
The current Oslo Børs opening hours provide for continuous trading from 09.00 to 16.20. In addition, there is a closing call for products traded in the equities market, which concludes at around 16.30. In practical terms, the change will involve extending the period of continuous trading for shares, primary capital certificates and financial instruments such as derivatives, subscription rights, warrants and exchange traded funds (ETF) by one hour to 17.20. This will then be followed by a closing call that will conclude at around 17.30. The change will also apply to the Oslo Axess marketplace, but the fixed-income markets will not be affected by the change, and its opening hours will continue to be 09.00 - 16.00.
On 31 August 2007 Oslo Børs circulated a consultation document in collaboration with OMX (acting for the exchanges of Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki) that proposed harmonisation of opening hours between all the exchanges mentioned. The Stockholm and Helsinki exchanges have been open until 17.30 for some time, but the Copenhagen exchange closes at 17.00 and Oslo Børs closes at 16.30. The consultation document also raised the question of evening trading. Oslo Børs does not currently intend to offer evening trading.
The Oslo Børs and OMX consultation document is available on the Oslo Børs website at.
http://www.oslobors.no/ob/hoeringer?c=Page&cid=1066716655378&contentid=1189397281824&pagepointer=2
