Labor Day means shopping, not Wall Street trading.
Labor Day in the U.S. is Sept. 3, and although financial markets will observe regular hours on Friday to wrap up trading in August, most trading platforms will be shuttered Monday.
In observance of the federal holiday, which was signed into law in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland, there will be no trading on the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.21% S&P 500 SPX, -0.07% and the Nasdaq Composite indexes COMP, +0.05% .
Similarly, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which is a trade group for the fixed-income industry, is recommending a closure for the bond market on the day, which means no trading in the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.50% .
In commodities, energy futures, including West Texas Intermediate crude-oil futures CLV8, +0.36% , will observe regular hours on Friday, settling at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, but will be “halted” on Monday. That means there will be no settlement price for contracts, as will be the case on Comex for gold GCZ8, -0.45% and other metals futures, which will adhere to their regular 1:30 p.m. settlement on Friday.
The currency market, which operates globally and trades continuously, won’t be affected by the holiday, although below-average levels of volume are anticipated during this seasonally thin trading period for Wall Street.
The holiday may be a welcome respite for traders, who were already struggling through light volumes, and who can now focus on barbecues and beach time ahead of midterm elections and September, which has been known to be a traditionally choppy stretch for investors.
Since its inception in 1928, the S&P 500 has finished lower in September more than any other month, or 55% of the time, for an average return of negative-1.01%, while the Dow has declined 70 times out of 121 Septembers for an average return of negative-1.03%, according to Dow Jones Data Group.