How Many Days Is the Stock Market Open a Year?

The New York Stock Exchange is one of the biggest and most important stock exchanges in the world. Since the 1950s, the NYSE has been running each week from Monday through Friday, making stock market hours similar to those of a bank. The number of trading days in a year is also similar to the days when banks are open. The number of stock trading days per year may fluctuate slightly depending on the days when certain holidays fall. In 2019, the NYSE will be open 251 days.

Stock market hours in the United States are very similar to standard business hours. The New York Stock Exchange is open for trading hours from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern. However, sometimes the NYSE closes early for some holidays.

The Nasdaq’s normal trading hours schedule runs Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern. The Nasdaq also offers pre-market trading hours from 4 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Eastern and after-hours trading from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern.

Although the New York Stock Exchange is closed every weekend, both Saturday and Sunday throughout the calendar year, it is closed on only nine scheduled holidays each year. Those holidays are New Year's, Martin Luther King Day, Washington’s Birthday, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Besides these holidays, the New York Stock Exchange is open every week, all 52 weeks in a year. The Nasdaq follows the same schedule.

The number of stock trading days in a year depends on when holidays fall on the calendar. These holidays all fall on weekdays in 2018, 2019 and 2020, bringing the number of trading days in a year in each of these years to 251.

However, even in years when holidays fall on weekends, the stock market is open on the same number of days. For example, in 2012, New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday. But instead of reopening the stock market as usual on Monday, the stock markets remained closed to celebrate the holiday. In general, when a designated holiday as listed above falls on a weekend, the stock market will remain closed the following weekday in observance of the holiday.

The stock markets also close early before some holidays. On the day before Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, markets close at 1 p.m., three hours before they would usually close. If these three days are included in the overall tabulation, the New York Stock exchange is usually open 248 full days.