Research report · October 2026 · Follow-up to the TabbFORUM overnight series
Battle of the Overnight ATS Titans
Three venues carry the overnight US equity tape, and in 2026 the balance between them moved. Blue Ocean still carries most of it; Bruce's share rose in two steps; Moon showed it can absorb flow when needed. A halt of 18 symbols and a network outage tested the market twice, and showed that liquidity was there when access was not.
Three-venue notional, Oct 13 to 26
68 / 29 / 2.5%
Blue Ocean / Bruce / Moon; August 85 / 14 / 1.4
Oct 21 outage session
-14%
three-venue notional vs the prior seven sessions
September halt flow
7%
found another venue; the quotes were there
FINRA weekly data
0.98
correlation with the venue files
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Two stress tests
The September halt and the October 21 network halt: where the flow went, and the routing and market-data plumbing that limited it.
The flow shift
Two steps in the overnight balance, decomposed name by name, with FINRA's independent confirmation by tier.
Quoted spreads, with the size qualifier
Seven clusters of conditions that decide which venue quotes tighter, always paired with quote size.
The universe
Heat maps of notional, executions and trade size, and six activity clusters common to both venues.
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Venue figures come from Blue Ocean, Bruce Markets and OTC Markets (Moon) daily files, with a $50K per-symbol floor, checked against FINRA Rule 4552 weekly ATS data. The data show what traded, not who routed it. Spreads are venue-reported averages, not NBBO. General market information for informational purposes only; not investment advice.