Settlement in Europe is T+2, there's talk of T+1 settlement, but there are complications around some classes of securities, things like ETFs, where the underlying might be in a different country/exchange/timezone with bank holidays and stuff like that which complicate matters.
I'm also interested in this idea that large investment firms can trade out of hours - this has never been the case in any market that i've seen. There are some 24/7 markets though (CME is like this I believe?) so maybe there is a disconnect between the hours offered to customers vs the exchange hours? I suppose the other possibility is that the broker trades the opening auction and doesn't offer this to their customers, but i'd have thought they would simply bundle everything into the auction from overnight.
Back in the day, the UK settled twice per month, with the various brokers having tracked all of the trades for the fortnight then the accounts departments moving the difference once they had agreed the actual total (which of course would never match with a word of mouth + paper based system). It's amazing it worked so well for so long, all basically based on trust and hence why being an exchange member was so important for trading.
The move to a rolling settlement date part of the Taurus/Talisman project in the 1980s. This got cancelled, lots of IT companies had invested heavily to be ready for this got burnt, but what emerged was the less extensive CREST system which is still in use today.
The original move was to a T+5 rolling settlement, which moved to T+3 in the early 2000s and is now T+2.
I'm also interested in this idea that large investment firms can trade out of hours - this has never been the case in any market that i've seen. There are some 24/7 markets though (CME is like this I believe?) so maybe there is a disconnect between the hours offered to customers vs the exchange hours? I suppose the other possibility is that the broker trades the opening auction and doesn't offer this to their customers, but i'd have thought they would simply bundle everything into the auction from overnight.
Back in the day, the UK settled twice per month, with the various brokers having tracked all of the trades for the fortnight then the accounts departments moving the difference once they had agreed the actual total (which of course would never match with a word of mouth + paper based system). It's amazing it worked so well for so long, all basically based on trust and hence why being an exchange member was so important for trading.
The move to a rolling settlement date part of the Taurus/Talisman project in the 1980s. This got cancelled, lots of IT companies had invested heavily to be ready for this got burnt, but what emerged was the less extensive CREST system which is still in use today.
The original move was to a T+5 rolling settlement, which moved to T+3 in the early 2000s and is now T+2.