U.S. Stock Market Holidays: When Are Exchanges Closed?

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U.S. stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq are closed on Saturdays, Sundays and ten scheduled market holidays each year. On every other weekday, regular trading runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Three days a year usually carry a shortened 1:00 p.m. session instead of a full closure. If the market is closed today and it isn’t a weekend or one of those holidays, the cause is an unscheduled event such as a national day of mourning, a severe storm or a national emergency. These closures are rare, and the exchange announces them in advance whenever it can.

Which Holidays Close the U.S. Stock Market

The NYSE, Nasdaq and smaller U.S. exchanges follow largely the same holiday calendar. That calendar tracks the federal holiday schedule with two differences: it adds Good Friday and drops two federal holidays. Most dates move each year because they are set by weekday rather than by calendar date:

1. New Year’s Day: January 1.
2. Martin Luther King Jr. Day: third Monday in January.
3. Washington’s Birthday (Presidents Day): third Monday in February.
4. Good Friday: the Friday before Easter Sunday, so it can fall in March or April. It is not a federal holiday, but the exchanges close.
5. Memorial Day: last Monday in May.
6. Juneteenth National Independence Day: June 19. The NYSE added it beginning in 2022, after it became a federal holiday in 2021.
7. Independence Day: July 4.
8. Labor Day: first Monday in September.
9. Thanksgiving Day: fourth Thursday in November.
10. Christmas Day: December 25.

On these days no regular session takes place. Pre-market and after-hours sessions don’t run either, so a closure covers the whole trading day. Trading resumes at the 9:30 a.m. opening bell on the next business day. After a Monday holiday that is Tuesday. After Thanksgiving it is Friday, which is a shortened session.

Federal Holidays When Stocks Still Trade

Two federal holidays leave the stock market open: Columbus Day (also observed as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the second Monday in October) and Veterans Day (November 11). The NYSE and Nasdaq run normal sessions on both.

Other parts of the financial system do stop. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the trade group whose holiday recommendations the U.S. bond market follows, recommends a full close for bonds on both days. The Federal Reserve and most banks are closed as well. You can buy and sell shares on Columbus Day, but a wire or bank transfer to fund your brokerage account won’t move until banks reopen, and Treasury and corporate bond trading is largely shut.

How Weekend Holidays Are Observed

A holiday that lands on a weekend still produces a weekday closure in most cases:

• Saturday holiday: the market closes the preceding Friday.
• Sunday holiday: the market closes the following Monday.

New Year’s Day is the exception. When January 1 falls on a Saturday, NYSE rules keep the market open on Friday, December 31, so the year’s final session, including year-end and quarter-end accounting and fund pricing, still takes place. That year has no observed New Year’s closure. This is why some years show fewer than ten weekday closures on the exchange calendar.

Example

Take a year in which July 4 falls on a Saturday. Exchanges close on Friday, July 3, so the trading week ends Thursday and reopens Monday, July 6. In a year when July 4 falls on a Sunday, the closure moves to Monday, July 5, and the following week has four sessions.

Now take a year in which Christmas falls on a Saturday. The market closes Friday, December 24, which would otherwise have been the Christmas Eve early-close day. A shortened session can’t fall on a day the market is already closed, so that year has no 1:00 p.m. Christmas Eve session.

When the Market Closes Early

Three sessions are commonly shortened to a 1:00 p.m. ET close for stocks:

• The day before Independence Day, when July 3 is a regular trading day.
• The day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday).
• Christmas Eve, when December 24 falls on a weekday trading day.

Options on stocks and indexes follow the shortened schedule. For bonds, SIFMA typically recommends a 2:00 p.m. ET early close before major holidays. That covers the days before Good Friday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and New Year’s Day, as well as Black Friday and Christmas Eve. On these days the bond market can wind down earlier than stocks, or on days when stocks trade a full session.

Why the Market Might Be Closed on a Non-Holiday

Unscheduled closures are uncommon and usually fall into a few categories.

National Days of Mourning

The death of a U.S. president is the most frequent non-holiday reason for a closure. The exchanges closed for the funeral of Ronald Reagan in 2004, of George H.W. Bush in 2018 and of Jimmy Carter on January 9, 2025. Mourning closures are usually announced several days ahead, which gives traders time to adjust orders.

Weather and Natural Disasters

Hurricane Sandy shut U.S. stock markets for two days in October 2012. It was the first weather-related closure of more than one day since the Great Blizzard of 1888. Severe weather prompts a closure when it threatens the safety of people who run the market or the systems that support it.

Technical Failures

A system problem can halt one exchange without closing the whole market. On July 8, 2015, the NYSE stopped trading for close to four hours because of a configuration issue in its systems. NYSE-listed stocks kept trading on other venues such as Nasdaq and BATS during the outage, which limited the impact on investors.

National Emergencies and Historic Events

The longest modern closure followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when stock markets stayed shut for four trading days while Lower Manhattan’s financial district recovered. Earlier closures include:

• July 31 to Nov. 28, 1914: the NYSE closed for four months as World War I began in Europe, the longest shutdown on record.
• June 13, 1927: a closure for the New York parade honoring Charles Lindbergh after his solo trans-Atlantic flight.
• Nov. 22, 1963: trading stopped early in the afternoon after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
• June 12 to Dec. 31, 1968: the exchanges closed on Wednesdays during the “paperwork crisis.” Trading volume had outgrown the manual handling of stock certificates and trade confirmations, and brokers and clearinghouses needed the time to catch up.
• July 21, 1969: the NYSE closed for a national day of participation after the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Circuit Breakers

Market-wide circuit breakers pause trading during a single session but don’t close the market for scheduled reasons. They are based on declines in the S&P 500 index from the prior day’s close. A 7% drop (Level 1) or a 13% drop (Level 2) triggers a 15-minute halt if it happens before 3:25 p.m. ET. A 20% drop (Level 3) ends trading for the rest of the day. If stocks stopped trading in the middle of a session, a circuit breaker or a single-stock halt is a more likely explanation than a closure.

Other U.S. Markets and Trading Sessions

The stock exchange calendar doesn’t govern every market:

• Options: the Cboe Options Exchange generally follows the stock market’s holiday and early-close schedule.
• Futures: exchanges such as CME set their own holiday schedules, sometimes with abbreviated sessions on days when stock exchanges are fully closed.
• Crypto and forex: cryptocurrencies trade every day, including weekends and holidays. Currency markets trade around the clock from Sunday evening to Friday evening, though liquidity can be thinner on major holidays.

Non-U.S. Markets

Foreign exchanges keep their own calendars and hours, so a U.S. closure doesn’t stop trading everywhere, and the reverse is also true. Shared holidays such as New Year’s Day and Christmas often line up, but many don’t:

• Canada: the Toronto Stock Exchange is open on U.S. Thanksgiving and closed on Canadian Thanksgiving, the second Monday in October.
• Boxing Day: markets in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia close on December 26.
• United Kingdom: the London Stock Exchange closes for bank holidays, including several that don’t exist in the U.S. Oslo closes on Ascension Day.
• India: exchanges close for national and religious holidays, including Republic Day (January 26), Independence Day (August 15), Holi, Diwali, Eid and Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti.

If you hold foreign stocks, ADRs or international funds, a fund’s underlying market can be closed while the U.S. listing trades, and the reverse can also happen. Overseas opening and closing times are covered in stock market hours for the world’s major exchanges.

What a Closure Changes for Your Trades

A closed market affects more than whether you can place an order:

• Orders: you can usually still submit orders through your broker on a holiday, but they queue until the next session. A market order entered on a holiday executes at whatever price prevails at the next open, which can differ from the last close if news broke during the closure.
• Settlement: U.S. stock trades settle one business day after the trade (T+1). Days when the market or banks are closed are skipped. A Friday sale ahead of a Monday holiday settles on Tuesday, so the cash arrives later than it would in a normal week.
• Options expiration: when an exchange holiday falls on a standard expiration Friday, as Good Friday sometimes does, expiration moves to the preceding Thursday. Positions you planned to manage on Friday need attention a day early.
• Holiday trading conditions: sessions around holidays can see lighter participation. Research on the “holiday effect” has examined price behavior around these days, but the findings are not a dependable basis for timing trades.

FAQs

The Bottom Line

Anyone who trades U.S. stocks or moves money into a brokerage account should check the exchange calendar before holidays and early-close days. Orders placed during a closure wait for the next open, settlement skips closed days, and holiday expirations can shift options deadlines to Thursday. If trading stops on an ordinary weekday, a circuit breaker, a single-exchange outage or a rare announced closure is the likely cause.