Glossary

24-hour trading lets retail investors place orders on US equities outside the standard 9:30am-4:00pm ET session, typically Sunday evening through Friday evening.

The after-hours session is the window after the 4:00pm ET regular close when US stocks can still trade on lit exchanges — generally 4:00pm-8:00pm at retail brokers.

An ADR is a US-traded security representing shares of a non-US company, issued by a US depositary bank that holds the underlying foreign shares.

A CFD is a leveraged derivative contract between a trader and a broker that pays the difference in price between contract open and close — economically similar to an undelivered margined long or short.

An equity perpetual future is a crypto-style perpetual contract whose price references a public equity, settled in stablecoins with funding payments instead of expiry.

Extended-hours trading refers to the pre-market (4:00am-9:30am ET) and after-hours (4:00pm-8:00pm ET) sessions surrounding the regular US equity trading day.

Fractional shares let investors buy less than one share of a stock or ETF, expressed either as a fractional quantity (0.25 shares) or a dollar amount ($50 of AAPL).

Grey market securities are unlisted, unquoted equities that trade only by direct dealer negotiation — the lowest tier of US OTC stocks.

OTC tiers are the quality bands OTC Markets Group assigns to over-the-counter securities — OTCQX (highest), OTCQB, Pink Current, Pink Limited and Grey — reflecting disclosure and listing standards.

The SEC defines a penny stock as a security trading under $5 per share — but in practice the term refers to thinly-traded micro-cap stocks, often on the OTC market.

The Pink market — historically called the 'pink sheets' — is the OTC tier for issuers that do not meet the disclosure or financial standards of OTCQX or OTCQB.

The pre-market session is the window before the 9:30am ET regular open when US-listed stocks can trade on lit exchange order books — typically 4:00am-9:30am at retail brokers.

A short locate is the broker process of confirming shares are available to borrow before allowing a short sale, as required by SEC Regulation SHO.

A tokenized stock is a blockchain-issued token whose price tracks an underlying public equity, typically fully or partially backed by the actual share held in custody.