IMF finds tokenized stocks 1.5 times more volatile than shares

The International Monetary Fund took its first close look at how tokenized stocks actually trade and found they move about 1.5 times as wildly as the shares they copy. More than half of that trading happens while US markets are closed.

That finding comes from Chapter 3 of the IMF's Global Financial Stability Report, published on October 8, 2026. IMF staff studied the five most actively traded tokenized versions of US stocks across 11 trading venues, covering 365 trading days and more than two million five-minute price snapshots.

What the IMF measured

Tokenized stocks are blockchain tokens that stand in for a real company share, such as Tesla or Nvidia. They trade around the clock, nights and weekends included. The IMF wanted to know whether that convenience carried hidden costs. It did.

Realized volatility ran about 1.5 times higher than on the traditional shares. Liquidity was much thinner, so larger orders pushed prices around more. About 80% of trades were for less than one whole share, which the report read as genuine demand for fractional ownership. People want to own a sliver of Tesla. The tokens let them.

Most of the activity landed after hours. More than half of all tokenized stock trades happened outside regular US market times, when the real exchanges sit dark. That points to buyers in other time zones, or to people who cannot trade during the working day.

Why thin, split markets worry the IMF

Here is the catch. The same stock can trade as a token on several platforms at once, each with its own pool of buyers and sellers. Prices drift apart. During calm weeks that is a nuisance. In a sell-off it can mean no single venue holds enough depth to absorb the rush.

Collateral drew a second warning. A token can be pledged as backing for a loan on one platform while its value is already committed somewhere else, building up borrowing that supervisors cannot easily see. Round-the-clock trading and automatic margin calls could then spread a shock faster than a normal market would contain it.

One finding cut the other way. When US markets reopened, more than 85% of the overnight price moves in the tokens showed up in the real shares within five minutes. So the tokens were tracking reality, not inventing their own. The IMF called the result preliminary and warned that the sample was small.

Who runs the tokenized stock market

This is still a tiny corner of finance. Tokenized stocks were worth about $2.3 billion when the IMF ran its numbers. The market for all tokenized real-world assets, things like bonds, private credit and money-market funds, stood near $65 billion as of July 31, 2026. Put plainly, tokenized equities are a rounding error next to the stock markets they mirror.

Two issuers dominate. Ondo Finance and Backed Finance together account for more than 70% of the tokenized stock value, the report said. The products carry familiar names: Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet, and baskets tied to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. For its detailed study the IMF examined about $345 million of this market, roughly 15% of it.

What to watch

Regulators did not get a call for a ban. The IMF argued the plumbing needs fixing before the market grows larger: clear legal rules on who owns a token, settlement systems that can talk to each other, and safeguards so liquidity does not drain all at once. Better oversight sits on the list too.

Big exchanges keep pushing in. OKX and the parent of the New York Stock Exchange have filed for a round-the-clock tokenized stock venue, and others are likely to follow. The more trading moves onto these rails, the more the IMF's warnings matter.

For readers, the takeaway is modest. Tokenized stocks offer something real, the chance to buy a fraction of a share at midnight. They also trade rougher than the shares themselves, on a market still measured in billions rather than trillions. The IMF's own evidence runs both ways, which is why it asked for guardrails rather than applause.