NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS NEWS
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Tiger Brokers, an online share trading platform used by retail investors in New Zealand and other markets, has added pre-market and post-close trading in US stock options. The service covers options on 24 large companies listed in the United States, among them Apple, NVIDIA, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
The feature sits inside the options section of the existing Tiger Trade app. Anyone using it outside the normal US session must submit a limit order, which sets the highest price a buyer will pay or the lowest a seller will accept, rather than a market order that fills at whatever price is available.
Before the regular US open, options trade from 7:30am to 9:25am Eastern Time. After the close, the window runs from 4:00pm to 4:15pm Eastern Time. For investors here, those periods currently fall between 12:30am and 2:25am New Zealand time, and between 9:00am and 9:15am the following day.
The early-morning window is the one most likely to matter to a New Zealand user. A company’s quarterly earnings, a US economic release, or an overnight global event can all move a share price before Wall Street opens, and the new sessions let an options holder adjust a position during that gap instead of waiting for the regular session.
Users enable the feature by updating the app and choosing the relevant trading-hours setting when they submit an options order.
Orders placed during extended periods go directly to US exchanges. Some brokers instead route such trades through an over-the-counter market-maker, where the broker’s counterparty sets the price. Tiger Brokers positions the direct route as giving clients access to exchange liquidity and transparent pricing at times when news is moving values.
Extended-hours dealing in US shares has become more widespread in recent years. Options access outside the regular session has remained narrower, particularly for retail investors outside the United States, a gap this launch targets.
The product is available across Tiger Brokers’ licensed international markets, including New Zealand. The company says it is among the first brokers globally to offer single-stock options in these extended sessions.
Options and futures contracts traded on the Tiger Brokers platform reached 26.3 million in the second quarter of 2026. That was up 17.3 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier and 9.6 per cent on the first quarter of 2026.
The wider account base has grown in line with it. Total customer accounts stood at about 2.74 million as of 30 June 2026, and total client assets rose 16.7 per cent year on year to US$60.7 billion. The extended-hours launch targets derivatives activity, and the quarterly figures show it is the faster-moving part of the business.
For a New Zealand business owner who holds US equities or options, either personally or through a company investment account, the practical change is timing. You can adjust a position here in the morning, before the New Zealand working day properly starts, rather than in the small hours of the following US session.
The limit-order rule is the key constraint. Outside regular hours, an order will execute only at the specified price or better, so a position may not trade at all if the market moves away from that level. Liquidity is also thinner in these windows than during the main session, which affects how easily an order fills.
Tiger Brokers says it pairs access with education and safeguards to help clients understand how liquidity and pricing behave outside regular hours.
Only limit orders are accepted during extended sessions, and the feature requires the latest version of the Tiger Trade app.
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