More than half of sampled tokenized US stock trading occurs outside Wall Street's regular hours, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found.

The IMF's October Global Financial Stability Report also showed that approximately 80% of tokenized equity transactions involved less than one share, providing evidence of demand for fractional investments and around-the-clock access to American securities.

However, the study found that tokenized equities experienced roughly 50% higher realized volatility than their traditional counterparts, while fragmented trading venues offered significantly weaker liquidity.

The findings come as exchanges and financial institutions expand efforts to bring US equities onto blockchain infrastructure, potentially challenging conventional market hours and settlement arrangements.

The IMF examined five of the most actively traded tokenized US equity products issued by Ondo and xStocks, covering exposure to the S&P 500, Nasdaq, Tesla, Alphabet and Nvidia.

The analysis covered 11 centralized and decentralized trading venues, with more than 2 million five-minute price and trading-volume observations collected over 365 trading days.

The sampled products represented approximately $345 million in market value, or 15% of the $2.3 billion tokenized equity market as of July 31.

The trading patterns showed that investors were actively using features unavailable during conventional US stock-market sessions.

More than half of trading volume occurred outside the regular 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern session, including overnight and weekend periods.

The IMF said the activity suggested demand from investors operating in different time zones and those seeking to respond to market developments without waiting for American exchanges to reopen.

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