Is the stock market open on Juneteenth? The answer to this question is no. The stock market will be closed Wednesday, June 19, for the Juneteenth holiday. Bond traders will get a mid-week break, too, with the bond market also closed on Wednesday.
The holiday, which is also known as Juneteenth National Independence Day, celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans and falls on the anniversary of Union Army General Gordon Granger's June 19, 1865, proclamation that Texas was no longer a slave-holding state. Granger's announcement took place two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation which freed Southern slaves.
While Juneteenth has been unofficially celebrated for more than two centuries, Congress voted in 2021 to make it the 11th federal holiday. When President Joe Biden signed the bill, Juneteenth became the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.
The mid-week break will be a nice reprieve for investors, but there are plenty of uncertainties that could create headaches for them over the next several months.
True, the current bull market is in full swing with the S&P 500 trading in record-high territory However, the team at Wells Fargo Investment Institute says that in the months ahead, "events such as the November elections and any delays in inflation's renewed decline may prompt episodes of market volatility."
Still, the group says that if the Federal Reserve begins cutting interest rates and "the economy moves to a new and sustained growth improvement phase as we expect," investors can use pullbacks as buying opportunities for high-quality names. At Kiplinger, Dow Jones stock Coca-Cola (KO) and air carrier Delta Air Lines (DAL) are included among the best stocks to buy this year because of their strong fundamentals.
Meanwhile, for those wondering what time does the market open for regular trading hours, both the Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) run from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm Eastern time Monday through Friday.
Are banks open on Juneteenth? The answer to that question is no. Wednesday, June 19, is one of several bank holidays in 2024, and so banks will also be closed.
Below, we feature a full schedule of all stock market and bond market holidays for 2024.
2024 stock market holidays
2024 bond market holidays
* This is the recommended bond market holiday schedule from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). This schedule is subject to change.
