tl;dr: Most of the world still thinks that there is a time when “markets open.” In the digital world, markets don’t open because they never close.

I saw this welcome message on Etrade’s site

I felt like I was looking through a time machine.

In the pre-digital world, markets had to have a set time to open and close. After all, everyone needed to be in the same place.

Today, everyone is in the same place all the time.

That place isn’t the floor of the NYSE. It’s the Internet.

The opening and closing bell is cute, it’s nice, and it’s a relic of a bygone era.

For more, see Why are markets ever closed?