The official approval came this week from the Israel Securities Authority, and, unless something extraordinary happens, from this January, Sunday trading will be cancelled, and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s trading days will switch from Sunday to Thursday to Monday to Friday. The Friday session will be short, from 9:25 to 13:50, to accommodate the Jewish sabbath, which begins on Friday evening. There will be no change in trading hours on the other days.
This is one of the biggest changes in the local stock market’s history. It was announced just over a year ago. The change in working days to come into line with those of the major stock exchanges worldwide is a strategic move, meant to make the Israeli exchange more accessible to global investors and boost their presence in the Israeli market.
It is also a move that requires special preparation, for the banks and investment houses, which have been used to Sunday to Thursday trading for decades, for retail traders, and hedge funds and foreign investors. The pension and provident funds, and the stock exchange itself, will also have to adopt new working habits. For thousands of workers, it’s a big change.
The move to change the working week aroused fears at first, chiefly over how the strong bank unions, which in the past could have prevented it, would react. For them, however, the world has changed. These days, bank customers trade via the bank’s website or app. Very few customers go to their bank branch to give a buy or sell order; at most they will go there to receive advice from an investment consultant.
“The banks are ready for the change as far as their infrastructure is concerned,” a senior banking source says. “Some branches already work on Fridays and carry out trading in overseas securities and in foreign currency.”
The source says he understands the motives of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the Israel Securities Authority, to come into line with global trading as far as possible. “Mainly, they wanted us to be trading in parallel with Europe, since trading in the US begins at 16:30 Israel time (the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange will close at 14:00 on Fridays). This may perhaps be enough for Israeli stocks to be included in the MSCI Europe index. From conversations we have had we understand that this is a necessary condition, but it might not be sufficient. At any rate, the stock exchange wanted to fulfil a criterion that would advance us towards that goal.”
A new reality for the financial institutions
As far as readiness for the new working hours is concerned, the banking source says, “People are used to not working on Friday, so the investment houses, pension and provident funds, and so on, will have to undergo a cultural change. It will not just be a technical change. They will have to come with an appetite and mindset for working on Friday. People will have to adapt their family lives, since most people don’t work on Fridays, so few people will come into the office and few will want to engage in trading.”
Nimrod Sapir, CEO of the Investment Houses Association of Israel, believes that the step will require a broad reset, and he even says that, at this stage, it is not clear that it can be implemented yet.
“Switching to trading Monday to Friday could have positive consequences for the attractiveness of the capital market in Israel, particularly for foreign investors,” he says, “but it requires complex rearrangement by all capital market players, including the investment houses, because of the different operating and regulatory format that applies to the various activities and investment instruments.”
A senior source at one of the investment houses says, “I cautiously estimate that there won’t be flotations on a Friday, and that trading volumes will be thin, even thinner than on a Sunday.”
The addition of a new trading day could lead to demands for change in labor agreements, although the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange says that, for its part, work on Fridays is already covered in current agreements. There are those at the banks who say that it’s too early to tell, since the Securities Authority’s announcement only came out this week and the matter will presumably be examined in due course.
Mixed feelings among traders
Traders cannot be regarded as all of a piece. They include hedge funds, institutions, foreign investors, and independent and small retail traders. For all of them, it’s a significant change.
One hedge fund manager, Ori Tuval, CEO of Tuval Investment House and chairperson of the Allamanda Capital hedge fund, told “Globes,” “I secretly hoped that they might drop the idea, after so many investment houses and traders objected to it. There are advantages to trading on Sundays, when the rest of the stock markets around the world are closed. We and the Saudi Arabian stock exchange are the only ones open. So it’s possible to react on Sunday to what has happened over the weekend.”
Tuval says that Friday trading will actually harm local traders. “You won’t be able to respond online to trading in the US, which opens at 16:30 our time, on that day. There will be no trading in dual-listed stocks (traded in Tel Aviv and New York) on Friday itself. The Americans are asleep between 10:00 and 13:50 our time. The Europeans start working at 11:00 Israel time, and in the UK trading starts at 12:00. So this isn’t really what will move the cheese. This change is not for the better.”
Another senior hedge fund manager sees things completely differently. “It’s finally happening, and we’re switching to working like the rest of the world. In general, Sunday has been a dead day for decades as far as we are concerned. There are no trading volumes on the stock exchange. There are no futures contracts traded around the world. So in my view it should have happened long ago. It’s true that people are used to not working on Friday. But at our fund we’re ready for it. The employees work shifts in any case. Hedge funds also trade in large volumes overseas, so we always have someone stuck to a screen during Friday night meals.
“This year there were also many crises on Fridays. There was a run of Fridays with difficult security events in Israel, and President Trump is wont to come out with declarations on a Friday. When the Israeli market is inactive, you can’t do anything in the core of your portfolio, so you first and foremost respond to overseas trading. This is a move that will ultimately bring more foreign money to Israel, activity in ETFs, and so on. Taking a global view, it’s something positive, despite the difficulty for traders.”
Effect overseas
Harel Gillon, co-CEO of Oppenheimer & Co. Israel, believes that the change in trading hours will not lead to drastic change in the activity of foreign investors, but that it could bring a slight improvement.
“It gives the foreign investors flexibility that their position will be managed at that time, so if there’s an extraordinary macro-economic event in the world, and the foreigners want to change their entire portfolios, they won’t now have to wait for Israel to open its capital market on Sunday.” Gillon thinks that accession to the MSCI Europe index, which the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange says openly is its aim, could be a game-changer, “and lead to huge trading volumes.”
How will the companies be affected?
Market sources find the impact of the change on listed companies hard to estimate. The investment institution source says that difficulties could arise in respect of the duty to report. “It’s likely that there will some disorganization among the reporting public companies, because they will start to report on Fridays as well. This is not the same as putting a few young shift workers on call at investment houses. When a company needs to issue an immediate report, only someone with a token (a special digital key from the Securities Authority) can do so. This is generally the legal counsel or some other senior person at the public company. It’s a headache for the reporting companies, but their alternative is to go private. I don’t think that they will abandon the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange because of this, it will just be a headache for them.”
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on August 7, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.
