Form T,
There was a time when the individual stock investor could only buy and sell stocks during the regular trading hours at the major stock exchanges. In the United States, these hours are typically from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. However, online trading began to rapidly gain popularity in the 1990s, leading to a greater demand for stocks in general, and particularly a demand for the ability to trade stocks after the traditional business hours. A Form T is a form that brokers are required to use to report transactions that occur after the market’s usual hours. Trades that occur outside of regular market hours are thus referred to as Form T trades.
After-hours trading had been available for some time to institutional investors and high net worth individuals, but became more widely available in the late 1990s to individual traders with the rise of Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs). If an investor or trader is a customer of a brokerage that has access to an ECN, then they can engage in Form T trades in the after-hours marketplace, which is open an additional two and a half hours after the traditional markets close in the U.S. An ECN acts as the go-between for buyers and sellers in the after-hours market.
