Is the stock market open on Good Friday? Friday and futures hours
US stocks trade 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET on a normal Friday and are closed on Good Friday. CME stock index futures close for the week at 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday and usually do not trade on Good Friday, which leaves gaps and odd bars that a backtest has to handle.
By Soren Huang · Published · updated · Editorial policy
Contents
- Is the stock market open on Friday, and when does it close?
- Which Fridays close early?
- Is the stock market open on Good Friday?
- Do futures trade on Good Friday?
- How do you check the CME holiday calendar each year?
- What do Good Friday and early closes look like in historical data?
- How should you set sessions and holidays in a backtest?
- Frequently asked questions
Is the stock market open on Friday, and when does it close?
Yes, the US stock market is open on regular Fridays, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the NYSE and Nasdaq. It is closed on Good Friday. CME stock index futures trade until 5:00 p.m. ET on Fridays. On Good Friday they are usually closed, and in some years they open only for a short morning session.
Regular trading hours are the main session of an exchange, when the opening and closing auctions happen and most volume trades. For US stocks, Friday has the same regular hours as Monday to Thursday. Extended-hours trading also exists before 9:30 a.m. and after 4:00 p.m. Its exact hours depend on the trading venue and your broker.
Futures run on a different clock. CME Globex is the electronic trading platform of CME Group, where stock index futures such as ES and NQ trade almost around the clock. The trading week opens on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. ET and ends on Friday at 5:00 p.m. ET. From Monday to Thursday there is a one-hour break from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET. CME publishes these times in Central Time, so you will see them as 5:00 p.m. CT on Sunday and 4:00 p.m. CT on Friday.
| Market | Friday hours (ET) | Next trading starts |
|---|---|---|
| NYSE and Nasdaq, regular hours | 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. | Monday 9:30 a.m. |
| CME stock index futures (Globex) | Open since Thursday 6:00 p.m., close Friday 5:00 p.m. | Sunday 6:00 p.m. |
For readers in Taiwan, the time difference changes with US daylight saving time. In summer, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET is 9:30 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. Taiwan time. In winter, it is 10:30 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. The futures close at 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday is 5:00 a.m. on Saturday in Taiwan in summer, and 6:00 a.m. in winter. The article on US stock market hours vs futures sessions covers the full daily schedule.
Which Fridays close early?
The Friday after Thanksgiving is an early-close day for US stocks, with the regular session ending at 1:00 p.m. ET. An early close is a scheduled trading day that ends hours before the normal closing time. In some years, Christmas Eve or July 3 is a weekday early close, with stocks also ending at 1:00 p.m. ET. When either date falls on a Friday, it is usually a full holiday instead, because Christmas or Independence Day then falls on a Saturday and the exchange closes on the Friday. CME index futures also close early on early-close days, at their own time, which the CME holiday notice lists.
Is the stock market open on Good Friday?
No. The NYSE and Nasdaq are closed all day on Good Friday. Good Friday is the Friday before Easter Sunday. Its date moves every year, between late March and late April.
Good Friday is an exchange holiday but not a US federal holiday. Banks and government offices are open, and government agencies still publish economic data. This matters because the monthly US jobs report usually comes out on the first Friday of the month. Some years, that Friday is Good Friday. The data then arrives while the stock market is closed.
One more fact helps with time conversion. US daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday of March, and Good Friday always falls later than that. So on Good Friday, ET is always 12 hours behind Taiwan.
Do futures trade on Good Friday?
In most years, CME stock index futures do not trade on Good Friday. In some years, when the jobs report falls on Good Friday, CME has scheduled a short session for some products that ends in the morning, US time. The schedule is decided each year, so the only reliable source is that year's CME holiday notice.
A closed Good Friday makes the weekend long. Futures stop at 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday and reopen at 6:00 p.m. ET on Sunday. That is 73 hours without trading, compared with 49 hours on a normal weekend. Any news in that time, including a jobs report released on Good Friday, shows up as a price gap at the Sunday evening open.
A short Good Friday session looks different in your data. You get a few hours of thin trading, then the market stops again until Sunday. Both cases need different handling in a backtest, so check which one happened in each year of your history.
How do you check the CME holiday calendar each year?
Read the CME holiday notice for each holiday, not just a list of dates. CME Group publishes a holiday calendar on its website. For each holiday there is a notice with the hours of every product group. Follow these steps:
- Find the holiday. Open the CME holiday calendar and select the year and the holiday, for example Good Friday.
- Find your product group. Equity index, interest rate, energy, metals and agricultural futures can each have different hours on the same day.
- Note the three key times. Note the last trading time before the holiday, any open or halt time on the holiday, and the reopen time after it.
- Convert the time zone. CME notices use Central Time. Add one hour for ET. Convert again if your data is in Taiwan time.
- Check the trade date. On some US holidays, Globex trades for part of the day but has no settlement. The trades from that short session are then often counted toward the next trading date. This changes which daily bar they land in.
- Write it down. Keep one line per holiday per year: date, product, type of day (closed, short session, normal) and times. You use this list to check your data.
For stocks, the NYSE and Nasdaq publish their holiday and early-close calendars for the coming years. The general effects of holidays on test results are in the article on market holidays in backtests. This article focuses on Fridays and Good Friday.
What do Good Friday and early closes look like in historical data?
Holidays and early closes show up as missing days, unusually small bars, partial bars and gaps. Most of them are correct data. They only cause problems when your strategy rules assume every day is a full day.
| Event | Daily bars | Intraday bars | What can go wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good Friday, fully closed | Thursday, then Monday. The week has four bars. | No bars from Thursday 5:00 p.m. to Sunday 6:00 p.m. ET. | A stop order fills at the Sunday gap price, worse than the stop level. |
| Good Friday, short session | A small Friday bar with low volume. | A few hours of bars, then nothing until Sunday. | Indicators count the short day as a full day. |
| Early close (for example, after Thanksgiving) | A small bar with low volume. | Fewer bars; the last bar may be a partial bar. | A time-based exit after the early close never triggers. |
| Holiday with a short Globex session | Its trades may be merged into the next day's bar. | Bars present, but assigned to the next trade date. | Daily highs and lows include hours from the day before. |
| Vendor fill | A flat bar with zero or tiny volume. | Repeated bars at one price. | Fake bars dilute averages and can trigger signals. |
A short day also shrinks volatility measures. The ATR (Average True Range) averages the range of recent bars. One half-day bar with a small range pulls it down. If your stop distance is a multiple of ATR, stops become tighter for the next few days. A flat vendor fill does the same thing, only more.
Time zones add another layer. If your data is stored in a different time zone from the exchange, the Sunday evening open can appear as Monday morning, or a Thursday close can appear on Friday. The article on backtest data quality: gaps, bad ticks, time zones and rolls shows how to find these problems.
How should you set sessions and holidays in a backtest?
Use the exchange's own session times and time zone, keep closed days out of the data, and check every short day against the holiday list. A session template is a saved set of trading hours that tells the backtest when a market is open and where each trading day starts and ends. Set it up in this order:
- Pick the session that matches the strategy. For CME index futures, choose either the full Globex session (Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. ET) or the regular stock-hours session (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET). Do not mix them across the history.
- Use the exchange time zone. Store or convert bars to ET or CT so the trading day starts and ends where the exchange says.
- Remove fake bars. Delete flat, zero-volume bars on days the exchange was closed, such as Good Friday in a fully closed year.
- Flag short days. Count the bars per day and compare the count with your holiday list. Every short day should match an early close or a holiday session.
- Make exits work on short days. If a rule exits at a fixed time, also exit on the last bar of the session. Then an early close cannot leave a position open.
- Decide on weekend holding. If the strategy holds positions over the weekend, the Good Friday weekend is 73 hours long in a fully closed year. Include that gap risk, or flatten before the Thursday close.
- Fill orders on the next bar. A stop that triggers across a gap should fill at the first price after the gap, not at the stop level. Include slippage on top.
Hypothetical example
You test an ES day-trading strategy on 5-minute bars with the full Globex session. A full trading day is 23 hours, which is 276 five-minute bars. Your check lists every day with fewer than 276 bars. Most short days match the holiday list: the Friday after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Monday holidays with an early halt. One short day does not match, so you look at the raw data and find a missing hour from the vendor. You also see that the strategy exits at 3:55 p.m. ET. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, the session ends earlier, so the backtest held a position opened at 10:00 a.m. until Sunday evening. After adding "exit on the last bar of the session", that trade closes on Friday.
After the fixes, rerun the test and look at trades near holidays. Trades entered on a Thursday before Good Friday, and trades that cross the Sunday open, tell you how much the strategy depends on gaps. If you trade ES or NQ, the article on ES and NQ futures backtesting lists the other settings to fix first.
What this means if you use AlphaPrime (Valynox): you set trading sessions, next-bar execution, fees and slippage in the backtesting research settings, so every candidate strategy is tested with the same holiday gaps and short days. The trades list in the Performance Report lets you look at the trades around Good Friday and early closes one by one.
Frequently asked questions
Is the stock market open on Good Friday?
No. The NYSE and Nasdaq are closed all day on Good Friday. Trading resumes on the following Monday at 9:30 a.m. ET. The date changes every year because Good Friday is the Friday before Easter Sunday.
What time does the stock market close on Friday?
On a normal Friday, US stocks close at 4:00 p.m. ET, the same as other weekdays. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, the regular session closes early at 1:00 p.m. ET. CME stock index futures close for the week at 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday.
Do futures trade on Good Friday?
In most years, CME stock index futures are closed on Good Friday. In some years, when the US jobs report is released that day, CME has scheduled a short morning session for some products. Check the CME holiday notice for the year you need.
Is Good Friday a federal holiday in the US?
No. Good Friday is a stock exchange holiday, but not a federal holiday. Banks and government offices are open, and economic data can still be released that day. This is why a jobs report can come out while the stock market is closed.
Why is there a gap in my futures chart after Good Friday?
When CME is closed on Good Friday, futures stop on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. ET and reopen on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. ET. Any news in that time, such as a jobs report, is priced in at the Sunday open. The jump appears as a gap between the Thursday close and the first Sunday bar.
What AlphaPrime does here
AlphaPrime's backtesting research scope covers data resolution, trading sessions, next-bar execution, fees and slippage, so holiday weeks and early closes are tested under the same settings as every other day.