When Is the Stock Market Actually Closed

The US stock market is closed nine full days a year, plus three early-close days where trading stops at 1:00 PM Eastern. The NYSE and Nasdaq run the same calendar. Bond markets follow a different calendar (closed on Columbus Day and Veterans Day, when stocks are open) which trips people up if they trade across asset classes.

The way I think about the holiday calendar is that it's a mostly-inherited list. New Year's Day, Independence Day, Christmas, those are obvious. Why is Columbus Day a bond market closure but not a stock market closure? Because the bond market follows the SIFMA recommendation, which mirrors federal holidays, and stocks don't. Why is Good Friday a stock holiday but not a federal one? Tradition. The calendar is sediment.

The Nine Full Closures

These are the dates. Specific weekdays vary year to year because some are tied to a Monday or to a specific calendar date.

• New Year's Day (January 1, or the nearest weekday)
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day (third Monday of January)
• Presidents Day (third Monday of February)
• Good Friday (the Friday before Easter Sunday)
• Memorial Day (last Monday of May)
• Juneteenth National Independence Day (June 19, added 2022)
• Independence Day (July 4, or the nearest weekday)
• Labor Day (first Monday of September)
• Thanksgiving Day (fourth Thursday of November)
• Christmas Day (December 25, or the nearest weekday)

That's actually 10. Easy to miscount because Juneteenth is recent. The NYSE recognized it as a market holiday starting in 2022, immediately after Congress made it a federal holiday in 2021.

The Three Early-Close Days

On three days a year, the market closes at 1:00 PM Eastern instead of 4:00 PM:

• The day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday)
• Christmas Eve (December 24, when it falls on a weekday)
• Independence Day eve (July 3, when it falls on a weekday)

Volume on these half-days is famously thin. Spreads are wider. Big institutions don't want to take fresh risk into a long weekend with reduced liquidity. The half-day exists more for the people whose firms make them stay than for actual trading.

When the Market Closes Unscheduled

The exchange has shut down outside the regular calendar a few times. Some of the more notable:

• 9/11 attacks (2001): Closed for four trading days, the longest closure since the Great Depression.
• Hurricane Sandy (2012): Closed for two days as lower Manhattan flooded.
• Reagan funeral (2004): Closed in observance.
• George H.W. Bush funeral (2018): Closed in observance.
• Bank holiday (1933): The market was closed for over a week as FDR ordered banks shut to stop runs.

Closures during sitting-president funerals are tradition, not law. The exchange decides. Decisions for hurricanes and other disruptions sit with the NYSE's leadership in coordination with Nasdaq.

The Quirks Worth Knowing

When a holiday falls on a Saturday, the market is closed the preceding Friday. When it falls on a Sunday, the market is closed the following Monday. New Year's Day on a Saturday means a long weekend without an extra holiday (only the Friday is closed, not the Saturday too, because Saturday wouldn't have been open anyway).

Settlement timing got faster in 2024. The US moved to T+1 settlement, meaning trades clear one business day after execution. That makes holiday cash management cleaner: if you sell on a Tuesday and Wednesday is a holiday, your cash settles Thursday. Used to be Friday under T+2.

The Practical Take

If you're a long-term holder, the calendar doesn't matter. If you're placing limit orders or running automated strategies, the calendar matters a lot. Most brokerages publish the year's closures by January, and the NYSE site has the canonical list. The thing that catches people out is the bond market calendar disagreement, especially if they hold ETFs that touch both markets. On Columbus Day, the bond ETF won't price normally even though stocks are trading.