The London Stock Exchange currently trades for about eight hours every weekday. It would be possible to extend that, probably to about 18 or 19 hours trading every day (the remaining 5 or 6 hours the Exchange would need to be closed to allow for things like IT upgrades and fixes, and for middle and back office functions to be completed).
The reason it hasn't happened is that there is no demand. The majority of FTSE100 trading is done by Banks, Investment Managers and Pension Companies. They can do everything they want in the current eight hours. Supporting a trading team on a major market is very expensive, when you factor in issues like compliance costs, trader salaries, and administrative support.
There aren't enough retail traders out there to support 24 hour trading, the London Stock Exchange knows that the only way to get enough liquidity would be to bring the big players in. And they just don't want to pick up the bill, it would be incredibly expensive and they would get nothing out of it.
A few years ago the London Stock Exchange decided to move the start of trading to 8:00am so they could match the hours in Frankfurt. There was a near revolt when they told the big traders, no one wanted to support it. In the end they got it through, but there is no chance 24 hour trading will happen anytime soon.
Leo
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