Why Is the Stock Market Closed for Good Friday?

Today is Good Friday and the stock market is closed. I have no idea why this is since most of the rest of the country is open for business. I live in Washington, DC and the Feds will shut down for practically anything. But not today—it’s only Wall Street.
When I got my first job as a broker, I remember my branch manager saying that it was some sort of ancient inter-confessional deal to have one Friday off for the Easter/Passover season. That could be right but I’ve never found anything to back it up. Today, however, a closed market on Good Friday is more likely so traders can follow their brackets without interruption.
(By the way, there’s some doctoral dissertation waiting to written on the effect of fantasy sports on finance. Every trader I’ve ever known has had several fantasy football or baseball teams going. Wall Street is quite good at alternate reality; real reality is still a bit iffy.)
The stock exchange closed for two hours in honor of the death of J.P. Morgan (the man, not the stock—that’s doing fine, thank you very much).
The stock exchange used to have a brief Saturday session that was discontinued in 1952. Interestingly, the Saturday sessions have nearly been erased from history. If you look at many data files, like the Dow or S&P historical data at Yahoo Finance, the Saturday sessions aren’t there.
Poor Saturday, it’s gone down the memory hold.

Posted by on March 21st, 2008 at 7:39 am


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