US Market Holidays and Early Close Calendar

Market holidays and early close days directly affect historical data. On full holidays, no bars are generated, a data file will simply skip from the prior trading day to the next. On early close days, equity markets shut down at 1:00 PM ET, producing roughly 210 one-minute bars instead of the usual 390. Accounting for these dates is important when building trading models, calculating moving averages, or validating data completeness against expected bar counts.

Holiday Rules

The US stock and futures markets observe the following ten holidays each year. When a holiday falls on a weekend, the observed closure shifts to the nearest weekday as noted below.

Good Friday is not a federal holiday, but US equity exchanges (NYSE, Nasdaq) and most futures exchanges close for the full day. Some futures products may trade abbreviated sessions, check CME Group advisories for specifics.

Holiday Calendar: 2024 to 2030

The table below lists the observed market closure date for each holiday. Dates marked with an asterisk (*) indicate an observed date that differs from the actual calendar date. The 2026, 2027, and 2028 entries are taken from the NYSE published Holidays & Trading Hours table, cross-checked against the SIFMA US capital markets holiday schedule.

2024

2025

2026

Friday, July 3 is a full closure, not an early close. Source: NYSE Holidays & Trading Hours.

2027

No separate Christmas Eve early close because December 24 is itself the observed full-closure date. Source: NYSE Holidays & Trading Hours.

2028

December 24, 2028 falls on Sunday, so there is no separate Christmas Eve early close. Confirm with NYSE Holidays & Trading Hours closer to the date.

2029

2030

Historical One-Off Closures Since 1998

In addition to the recurring annual calendar, US equity markets have closed for several unscheduled one-day or multi-day events. Historical bar files will show a gap on these dates. The list below covers the post-1998 period that overlaps the bulk of Kibot's intraday history.

When backtesting or computing rolling statistics across these dates, expect a gap of one to four sessions. The day after a special closure resumes a regular session unless it coincides with a scheduled holiday.

Futures Versus Equities

Equities and futures do not always share the same holiday calendar. CME Group equity-index futures (ES, NQ, RTY, YM) follow the NYSE/Nasdaq full-closure days for New Year's Day, Good Friday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but trade either a normal or shortened session on several other equity holidays.

• MLK Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Juneteenth: CME equity-index futures typically run a shortened electronic session (close around 1:00 PM ET). Equities are fully closed.
• Day after Thanksgiving: Equities close at 1:00 PM ET; CME equity-index futures also close early on the same day, but commodity products may keep separate hours.
• Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve: Equities close at 1:00 PM ET on weekday occurrences; CME hours vary by product, with most equity-index and rate products on a shortened session.
• Special one-off closures (Reagan, Ford, Sandy, Bush, Carter): These applied to equities. CME equity-index futures generally remained open during the 2004, 2007, 2018, and 2025 mourning days; the 2012 Hurricane Sandy closure also halted CME electronic trading in equity-index products.

See Futures trading hours for the full regular-session and abbreviated-session breakdown by product family, and check CME Group advisories for the exact hours of any given shortened session.

Early Close Days

On certain days, US equity markets close early at 1:00 PM ET instead of the regular 4:00 PM ET. These shortened sessions produce approximately 210 one-minute bars rather than the standard 390. Per kibot's support Faq, the regular trading session runs 9:30 to 15:59 (last bar opens at 15:59:00), while shortened sessions run 9:30 to 12:59.

The consistently observed early close days are:

Additionally, some markets observe partial or shortened sessions on:

• Day before Good Friday (Thursday), select futures products may close early
• New Year's Eve (December 31), some exchanges close early, particularly if the following January 1 falls on a weekday

Early close schedules can vary by exchange and product. CME Group typically publishes advisory notices with exact hours for each shortened session. When validating data, expect fewer bars on these dates.

Programmatic Access

The current list of shortened trading sessions is available through the Kibot API:

http://api.kibot.com/?action=shortenedsessions

This endpoint returns dates and close times for upcoming and historical early close days, which is useful for automated data validation and bar-count checks (see Data completeness).

Key Takeaways

• US markets observe ten full-closure holidays per year, with Juneteenth added in 2021.
• Weekend-adjustment rules vary: MLK Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving are tied to a weekday-of-month and never shift; New Year's, Juneteenth, Independence Day, and Christmas shift to the nearest weekday when they fall on a weekend.
• Good Friday is not a federal holiday but US equity and most futures markets still close.
• Early close days (July 3, Black Friday, Christmas Eve) shut equity markets at 1:00 PM ET and produce ~210 one-minute bars instead of 390.
• The definitive programmatic source for shortened sessions is http://api.kibot.com/?action=shortenedsessions.
• Good Friday dates are computed via the computus (Easter) algorithm; see Data sources for the reference.

Related

• Trading hours, regular and extended-hours session times that these holiday rules modify
• Futures expirations, contract expiration calendars that interact with holiday closures
• Data completeness, how expected-vs-actual bar-count checks use this calendar
• Data sources, the CME Group holiday calendar and computus algorithm sources this page is built from