JD Durkin: Naureen Hassan, CEO of DriveWealth. I’ve been really looking forward to our conversation. Thanks for taking the time for us here today. US stock markets, we talk about it all the time with our viewers here on the show. They are moving to nearly round-the-clock trading. Why is that such a big deal for investors, not just here in the US, but all around the world as well?
Naureen Hassan: All around the world, that’s the key point. Investors internationally are jumping into the US markets, really driven by fractional shares, where anybody can own a slice of Google, Nvidia, SpaceX. So the demand is booming, and people want to trade in their daylight hours. This isn’t somebody trading in their mom’s basement at 2 a.m. This is somebody in South Korea who wants to trade when they’re awake.
JD Durkin: I get a lot of questions from people, especially on social media, in my DMs. They say, wait, are we really moving to 24/7 stock trading? How close to that potential reality do you see us moving?
Naureen Hassan: We’re already at 24/5. We’ve been offering 24/5 for two years now. About 10% of our volume happens overnight because, again, it’s Asia. Asians are awake, and that’s when they want to trade. So I think it’s only a short time before we see 24/7.
JD Durkin: And you mentioned South Korea. You’re also seeing big demand for US equities in places like India, Latin America, and throughout several countries in the Middle East. Talk to me a bit more, Naureen. What is driving the interest in some of those regions?
Naureen Hassan: It really is this fractional share trading, which has made investing accessible to investors all around the world. And you don’t need to be a big investor with fractional share trading. You can buy a dollar of Nvidia, and it’s great.
JD Durkin: I know DriveWealth is also participating in a tokenization pilot with the DTCC. Congratulations. That takes a lot more work than the rest of us see in the headlines. What does that actually involve, and what do you most hope or suspect it will really look like in practice?
Naureen Hassan: Well, 24/7 trading, we talked about it. The big barrier to 24/7 trading is the infrastructure. And what tokenization helps is that infrastructure, so that we can be always on. We can speed up settlement. And we just announced a partnership with Ripple, because the biggest barrier to 24/7 trading is that the banks are not open, and the banking infrastructure is not open on the weekends. And stablecoin settlement, which we’re partnering with Ripple on, helps make that all a possibility.
JD Durkin: So let’s ask a little bit more about the Ripple partnership, and any others that you’re particularly excited about right now. What do these developments really mean for DriveWealth?
Naureen Hassan: Well, for our ongoing global expansion, we want 24/7, truly tokenized trading, where the investor owns the underlying share, and we have continuous settlement. And that’s what we’re building in partnership with Ripple, that infrastructure, so that firms around the world can offer this to their investors. And we’re really excited about it. And we’re seeing demand from around the world. We just signed with TrueMoney, offering 30 million Thai investors access to US equities. So, exciting developments.
JD Durkin: I’ve got only about 30 seconds left. Some of the biggest changes you’re expecting to see in the way that people around the world continue to invest in US markets?
Naureen Hassan: I think AI is going to be the next frontier, right? I mean, we’re all talking about it here, agentic trading. Again, it’s about speed, instantaneously. You can’t build AI trading on top of batch infrastructure. So, you know, you need real-time APIs. You need tokenized trading. It’s the way of the future.
JD Durkin: Naureen Hassan, CEO of DriveWealth, really grateful for a few minutes of a busy schedule here at Money20/20. It’s great to see you.
Naureen Hassan: Thank you for having me.
