May 2025 Summaries

Growing foreign ownership of U.S. equities and demand from investors in APAC, EMEA, Oceania, LATAM, and MENA are increasing pressure on brokerages to offer access beyond standard U.S. market hours. The piece describes 24/5 trading as an emerging brokerage capability, supported by regulatory and exchange efforts following SEC approval in November 2024, and argues that it may increase trading activity, account funding, customer retention, and platform differentiation. Alpaca presents its 24/5 infrastructure as a service for broker-dealers, neobanks, and fintechs, offering order routing, real-time overnight market data, REST and FIX APIs, developer tools, and implementation support. It also notes that extended-hours trading carries risks including lower liquidity, greater volatility, delayed or partial executions, and potential limitations on fractional trading.

As of September 22, 2026, Alpaca’s High-Yield Cash program allows eligible non-pattern-day-trader API users to earn a variable annual percentage yield of up to 3.56% on uninvested U.S. dollar balances while retaining access to the funds for trading, transfers, and withdrawals. Enrollment is available through the Alpaca dashboard or Plans and Features section, and the program uses an FDIC Bank Sweep structure that may provide pass-through FDIC insurance of up to $2.5 million, depending on participating banks, account relationships, and other conditions. Alpaca notes that the advertised rate can change, returns are not guaranteed, and cash held in the sweep program is not SIPC-protected, while cash held in a brokerage account may receive SIPC rather than FDIC coverage.

Alpaca has launched a Fully Paid Securities Lending program for U.S. equities through its Broker API, aiming to help brokerage partners diversify revenue beyond trading activity by enabling customers to earn passive income from fully owned securities. Under the program, securities may be lent to institutions for uses such as short selling, market making, and hedging, with borrowing fees shared between brokers and participating clients. Alpaca highlights potential benefits including new revenue, stronger asset retention, customizable pricing and revenue-sharing tiers, detailed lending transparency, and a managed system for lending, reporting, and interest booking. The company states that loaned securities are not SIPC-protected, but cash collateral worth at least 100% of their value is held at a third-party bank to protect customers if borrowed securities cannot be returned. Alpaca notes that securities lending involves risks and encourages prospective participants to review its disclosures before entering a lending agreement.

Alpaca has expanded its Broker API to support trading and custody of US Treasuries, beginning with an initial partner and positioning the company for future additions of other bond products and international fixed-income markets. Its platform aggregates liquidity-provider quotes, routes market and marketable limit orders to competitive prices, reports average processing speeds as low as two milliseconds, and queues orders placed outside US bond-market hours. Alpaca also offers partners price- or yield-based markup models intended to support transparent fee structures, while it is developing fractional Treasury trading with proposed $1 minimum orders and $0.01 increments. The company, a US self-clearing broker-dealer offering infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, and crypto, notes that fixed-income investing carries risks including interest-rate sensitivity, credit, liquidity, volatility, and potential principal loss.