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The Federal Reserve delivered a 25-basis-point rate hike on September 16, taking the federal funds target range to 3.75%–4.00% in a unanimous 12–0 decision. The Fed said inflation remained elevated and that the move was intended to support a more timely return toward its 2% inflation goal.
But the market did not stop when the U.S. cash session ended.
In fact, some of the most interesting price discovery happened after the traditional market closed.
Binance Research found that US$1.02 billion traded across equity-linked perpetuals while U.S. cash markets were closed following the FOMC decision. During the following weekend, 198 TradFi perpetual contracts recorded US$7.25 billion in trading volume around the S&P DJI rebalance.
That highlights a broader change in how investors can respond to macro events. The question is no longer only what the Fed did.
It is where capital can move next and how quickly investors can express that view when traditional markets are shut.
The Fed Hiked. What Changed?
The September decision was a meaningful change in the policy path.
The Fed raised rates by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00%, while its projections showed inflation remained an important concern. Binance Research notes that 16 of 18 FOMC participants projected at least one additional rate increase by year-end, compared with the four cuts markets had been pricing at the beginning of 2026.
That creates different questions for different time horizons.
In the immediate term, traders need to process the policy announcement and its effect on rates, equities and volatility.
Over a longer horizon, investors are thinking about the path of inflation, economic growth and future monetary policy. Those horizons don't necessarily point in the same direction.
And that is where continuous markets become particularly relevant.
The Market Doesn't Close When the News Arrives
Traditional U.S. equity trading occupies only a fraction of the week.
Binance Research estimates that regular U.S. equity sessions account for just 19.3% of a standard week, even though those sessions capture approximately 87.2% of U.S. equity volume. The remaining time includes pre-market, post-market, overnight and weekend periods when new information can still arrive.
Central-bank decisions are a perfect example.
The September FOMC statement was released at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, two hours before the regular U.S. equity close. The market therefore had some time to react, but the information continued to be processed after the cash session ended. That's where perpetual markets provide another channel for price discovery.
Instead of waiting for the next U.S. opening bell, eligible traders can continue adjusting positions through supported perpetual contracts.
$1.02 Billion Traded After the FOMC
The post-FOMC session provides a concrete example.
According to Binance Research, US$1.02 billion was traded across 16 equity-linked perpetuals while U.S. cash markets were closed. The median contract captured 97% of the subsequent opening gap.
Individual contracts also showed how different exposures can react:
SPY-linked perpetual: +1.11%TMF-linked perpetual: +2.45%TBT-linked perpetual: −1.32%UVXY-linked perpetual: −5.94%
These were overnight moves between the Wednesday close and Thursday's U.S. market open. The numbers should not be interpreted as evidence that overnight prices always predict the next cash-market move.
Binance Research itself notes that the relationship varies by event and that overnight pricing can differ materially from the eventual opening price. The more important point is that the repricing can happen before the traditional market reopens.
Short-Term Reaction vs. Longer-Term Policy
This is where the Fed story becomes more interesting.
A rate hike affects several parts of the market at once.
Higher rates can change expectations around bonds, equity valuations, volatility and the cost of capital. But markets don't necessarily process all of those effects on the same timeline.
An overnight trader might focus on the immediate repricing of rate-sensitive instruments.
A longer-term investor might focus on whether inflation eventually falls, whether additional hikes materialize and what happens to economic growth.
The same FOMC decision can therefore produce different trading questions:
Short term: How is the market repricing the announcement?
Medium term: What does the policy path imply for rates and risk assets?
Long term: What does the changing cost of capital mean for valuations and portfolio allocation? Continuous markets don't answer those questions for investors. They simply provide another venue in which those views can be expressed.
Why Tokenized Stocks Add Another Layer
The overnight story isn't limited to perpetual contracts.
Binance Research has also documented the rapid growth of tokenized equities.
As of September 9, active tokenized-equity market capitalization had reached approximately US$4.0 billion, up 314% year-to-date, while monthly trading volume increased from US$237 million in January to US$7.9 billion in August. That matters because tokenized equities introduce another dimension to the traditional-versus-digital-market divide.
A stock represented on-chain can potentially interact with blockchain-based liquidity and financial applications rather than existing only inside traditional market infrastructure.
Binance Research found that DeFi active TVL connected to tokenized equities rose from US$21.6 million at the start of 2026 to US$289.1 million by September 9.
The market is therefore evolving beyond simply creating digital representations of stocks.
The emerging question is what investors can actually do with those assets once they are on-chain.
83 Tokenized Stocks, 156 Equity Perpetuals — One Broader Market
This is where Binance's expanding TradFi product set becomes relevant.
The platform now brings together multiple ways to express market views, including tokenized securities, equity-linked perpetuals and direct stock access for eligible users.
The exact number of available instruments changes as products are added, so the figures in this week's brief should be treated as a snapshot rather than a permanent count.
The underlying trend is more important:
More traditional financial exposures are becoming available through markets that operate beyond conventional U.S. equity hours.
That means a macro event arriving overnight no longer necessarily has to wait until Monday morning or the next trading session, before investors can respond through available instruments.
Weekends Are Becoming Part of Price Discovery
The S&P DJI rebalance provides another example.
During the market closure surrounding the September 21 rebalance, Binance Research recorded US$7.25 billion across 198 TradFi perpetuals.
The significance isn't that every contract moved in the same direction.
They didn't.
In fact, the data showed meaningful differences between individual names. SNDK, for example, was the most heavily traded addition by notional volume at US$744 million, but its return was only 0.30%, below the average performance of the selected additions.
That illustrates an important feature of continuous markets. They allow investors to trade individual views, not simply broad market exposure.
Instead of waiting for the next regular session to adjust a position around an event, eligible traders can potentially do so during the closure.
Where Does Capital Go Next?
There isn't one answer.
Some capital may respond to the Fed through rate-sensitive instruments. Some may rotate toward or away from equities depending on changing expectations. Others may use perpetuals to express short-term directional views without owning the underlying asset.
And tokenized-equity markets introduce another possibility: traditional assets can increasingly participate in on-chain liquidity and financial applications.
What matters is that these channels are beginning to overlap. The same macro event can now be reflected across crypto, traditional assets, tokenized securities and derivatives with some of those markets continuing to trade after traditional exchanges close.
The Market Is Becoming More Continuous
The bigger story behind W39 isn't simply that the Fed hiked. It is that market information keeps arriving even when traditional exchanges aren't open.
A central-bank decision doesn't wait for the opening bell. Neither does an unexpected company announcement, regulatory development, geopolitical event or index rebalance.
As more financial instruments become continuously tradable, the boundary between "market hours" and "market closed" becomes less meaningful.
Binance Research's recent data shows that this isn't just theoretical: billions of dollars are already being traded through TradFi perpetuals during periods when U.S. cash markets are closed. The result is a market environment where investors have more opportunities to react but also where price movements can happen around the clock.
The Fed may set the policy rate.
The market decides where capital moves next.
And increasingly, that price discovery doesn't wait for Monday morning.
#Binance #Macro #TradFi #Tokenization #crypto

Long-term strategy: how the synergy of TradFi and Web3 creates a resilient portfolio
A modern financial strategy should not be limited to just one area. The core principle of resilience is the uncorrelated nature of assets.
When the traditional stock market shows signs of overheating, part of the profits can be locked in stablecoins on the Binance Earn platform for steady interest accrual. When the cryptocurrency market goes through a deep correction, these accumulated reserves allow for selectively picking strong fundamental assets or entering protective TradFi/bStocks positions. The ecosystem’s flexibility makes it possible to implement this strategy within a single window.

A closed equities or commodities market does not mean that the Price Index TradFi Perpetuals necessarily freezes at the last value. In the current Binance documentation for periods of technical pause, holidays, and weekends, the Orderbook EWMA mode is described for equity and commodity contracts.
In this mode, the index does not use quotes from external providers, but the Impact Mid Price from the futures order book. This is the average between the Impact Bid Price and the Impact Ask Price. Then the value is smoothed exponentially with a weighted average, and the index movement is limited by risk parameters.