Is The Stock Market Open On MLK Day?

With half of January gone, investors may be hoping for more action from what has already been an exciting start to 2023.

So far this year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 3.5%, the S&P 500 is up 4.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is up 5.9%.

Last week, traders looked at the latest consumer price index reading. Consumer prices went down again in December, making it the sixth month in a row that they did. The market was hoping for this because it was worried about what more rate hikes by the Federal Reserve could mean for the U.S. economy. As a possible recession looms, market watchers also looked at how much JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), and other big banks made.

Here’s what investors should know if they want to trade on Monday, which is Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year.

Is The Stock Market Open On MLK Day?

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a federal holiday, so the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq Stock Market, and the bond market will all be closed.

Is The Stock Market Open On MLK Day
Is The Stock Market Open On MLK Day

Also, the over-the-counter markets will be shut down. Other places that will be closed are the Federal Reserve, banks, post offices, and public libraries.

On Tuesday, January 17, the U.S. stock exchanges, bond market, and over-the-counter (OTC) markets will open again and resume normal trading hours.

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Are International Markets Open Today?

Since Martin Luther King Jr. Day is only a federal holiday in the U.S., international markets will be open as usual.

What Should I Know About Martin Luther King Day?

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a time to honor the civil rights leader of the same name and remember how he helped end legal segregation and discrimination against Black people in the U.S.

The holiday is always on the third Monday of January, which is close to or on King’s birthday, which was January 15.

King was most well-known for his calls to action and for leading peaceful protests. In August 1963, he led a historic march on Washington, D.C., that ended at the Lincoln Memorial with his “I Have a Dream” speech.

The activist was killed in 1968. Fifteen years later, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill making King’s birthday a holiday. In 1986, it was the first time that Martin Luther King Jr. Day was a federal holiday.

How Has the Stock Market Historically Performed Leading Up to the Holiday?

Dow Jones Market Data says that the average gains for the Dow, the S&P, and the Nasdaq this year are 0.6%, 0.5%, and 1.6%, respectively.

What Else Should I Know About Markets?

Even though U.S. market people don’t have to trade on Monday, they can still think about what’s to come. In a Thursday note, Chris Zaccarelli, the chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance, looked at things from a long-term, positive point of view.”We think the markets are pricing in the first scenario, which is that the Fed is on track to bring inflation under control and won’t push us into a recession, or if they do, it will be a shallow recession,” he said. “But what keeps us up at night is the possibility of a worse outcome, such as inflation staying above 3% and/or a much deeper recession than the consensus expects.”

Investors have used the number of jobs to determine what the Fed will do next to bring down high prices.

“Even though the economy is growing slowly, the labor market is still pretty tight,” Barry Gilbert, an asset allocation strategist for LPL Financial, wrote on Thursday. “The Fed doesn’t want to hurt the economy unnecessarily, but getting inflation back to its long-term trend will likely require wage growth to slow even more.”

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