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The full year schedule of days U.S. markets are closed or close early, useful for planning around gaps in liquidity.
Market holidays are the specific days each year when U.S. stock and options exchanges are either fully closed or close early, observing a set schedule established by the exchanges themselves. Trading around these dates behaves differently than a normal session, both because of the closure itself and because volume and liquidity often thin out in the sessions immediately before and after a holiday, which is why keeping track of the schedule matters for anything from routine position management to options expiration planning.
U.S. exchanges, including the NYSE and Nasdaq, publish a fixed annual holiday schedule that covers major federal holidays such as New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, along with a handful of early close days, most commonly the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve when it falls on a trading day. The schedule is set well in advance and is consistent across the major exchanges, so a market holiday applies market wide rather than to individual stocks or sectors. Options and futures markets generally follow the same holiday schedule as the underlying equity markets, though some derivatives markets can have their own separate hours around certain holidays.
The EZPZ market holidays page lists the full schedule of upcoming closures and early close days for the current year, letting you plan ahead for any date that falls on or near a holiday. When a standard option expiration date lands on or is affected by a holiday, the exchange adjusts trading and settlement schedules around it, which is worth double checking for any position with an expiration near a holiday week. Trading volume in the sessions right before a holiday, and the day after, often runs lighter than normal, which can make price moves choppier than usual on comparatively small volume.
Traders use the market holiday schedule for basic planning purposes, like knowing in advance when markets will be closed so they are not caught off guard by an unexpected lack of price action, and adjusting expectations for liquidity in the sessions surrounding a holiday. Options traders in particular pay attention to how holidays affect the countdown of trading days until expiration, since a position's time decay and hedging needs are tied to actual trading sessions remaining, not simply calendar days. It is also a useful reference for planning time away from active trading around known low volume periods.
