MarketXT After-Hours Trades Off to Slow Start

Designed for the masses, MarketXT Inc.’s after-hours stock trading system is attracting just a few stragglers.

MarketXT, which advertises itself as the after-hours system designed specifically for the individual investor, says it has been trading anywhere from 10,000 to 60,000 shares a night since beginning operation Aug. 25. Most nights, though, it appears to be closer to 10,000--and usually there are no bids or offers posted for the majority of the stocks traded on the system.

In contrast, trading systems that cater to active “day traders” report rapid volume growth since extended hours began in recent months. Island ECN Inc., for example, trades an average of 1.5 million shares daily after the market closes, and RediBook says it trades about 300,000 shares daily.

The slow start for MarketXT indicates that “after-hours trading just by definition appeals to a limited segment of the market,” said Bill Burnham, general partner in Softbank Capital Partners, an investment fund.

To put after-hours volume in context, an average of 1.1 billion shares change hands on Nasdaq each day.

Executives at MarketXT and some of the firms that trade on the system say volume is growing as they expected it would.

“It just takes a long time to change trading patterns,” said Michael Sanderson, MarketXT’s chairman.