Dec. 28 was the last Sunday on which the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) was open for trade, as it prepares for a Monday-Friday trading schedule beginning on Jan. 5.
The move, initiated by TASE in March and approved by the Israeli Finance Ministry, will bring Israel’s trading days in line with other exchanges.
For the past 50 years, Israel’s stock exchange has traded on Sunday through Thursday, aligning with the regular working days of the Jewish state. Under the new system, Friday’s trading will end at 2 p.m. out of respect for the Jewish Sabbath, which starts on Fridays at sundown.
The Israel Securities Authority published a guide to the change of trading days in September.
The paper writes that the Sunday-Thursday schedule creates a “significant gap” between the trading days of the local exchange and those of most stock exchanges worldwide, which serves as “a barrier to the full integration of the local capital market into the global arena.”
This gap makes it difficult for foreign investors to operate in the Israeli capital market, impairs their ability to respond in real time to events in the Israeli market and detracts from operational coordination with international financial institutions, among other problems, according to the ISA.
The misalignment of workdays moreover “undermines the attractiveness of the Israeli capital market and its ability to serve as an efficient and liquid global venue for listings and trading.
“Accordingly, if the State of Israel seeks for the local capital market to also serve the global needs of companies, it must enable activity under appropriate conditions,” the guide states.
The ISA cited the United Arab Emirates as an example of a country with similar workdays to Israel that has changed its trading days to Monday-Friday.
The move completes a broader ISA strategy in recent years “to strengthen the Israeli public capital market and transform it into a modern, open and global market.”
The regulating body mentioned the implementation of measures such as permitting reports in English, foreign mutual funds, encouraging global offerings and others as steps that modernize the Israeli stock market.
“The success of the move will be measured only if existing foreign participants increase their involvement in trading and new foreign players enter the market,” a senior local stock exchange figure who was not identified by name told Hebrew-language financial outlet Calcalist.
“[TASE] hopes that, at the very least, there will be positive indications of the move in this respect in the coming months. In addition, changing the trading days opens a small window for local exchange indices to be traded as part of some of the major European indices, and thereby to benefit from greater demand.”
