WASHINGTON – As regular readers may recall, we tried to describe this upcoming weird Friday on Wall Street. Weird, because, unlike the usual trading day off for the New Years Holiday, Friday’s designated Federal holiday (since New Years Day is actually on Saturday this year) doesn’t count for investors in 2021. That anomaly is due to a weird and obscure NYSE accounting rule. Rule 7.2, to be exact. What this boils down to is that US stocks trade as usual this Friday, as do Canadian stocks.
However, those lucky Canadian exchanges close Monday to mark the New Years Holiday. But US exchanges, traders and investors don’t get Monday off either. (The Canadians don’t have to deal with Rule 7.2, at least on the Toronto Exchange.) Weird, but them’s the rules. This non-holiday holiday is something US investors experience in the US only about once every 10 years. Or so I’ve read. I don’t recall this myself. But at least that’s the way things work this holiday weekend.
Anyhow,
Here’s the New Years Holiday trading breakdown for ringing out 2021. And launching the New Year of 2022.
Friday, December 31, 2021
US Markets: equity, options, mutual fund and futures markets will open and close as usual. Pre-market and after hours trading sessions take place as usual.
BUT: Bond markets will close early at 2:00 p.m. ET.
Canadian markets: Open for trading as usual.
Monday, January 3, 2022
US markets: Open for trading as usual. Also, pre-market and after hours trading take place as usual.
But:
Canadian markets: Closed Monday to mark New Years Day. Dually listed Canadian stocks, however, will trade in U.S. markets on Monday, January 3, 2022.
In other stock trading news…
As of 1:00 p.m. ET Thursday, US markets and stocks seem content to hover at equilibrium with a slight green ink bias. All three major averages – the Dow, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ – remain up fractionally in light trading. Those numbers could shift a bit. But thus far, barring any sudden cataclysmic news, averages should close fairly flat.
Friday’s action could resemble today’s, but perhaps with a slight downside bias. Again, though, with anticipated light trading, calling the final hours of market action at the close of 2021 is likely not worth the effort. Pretty much any call is likely to be the wrong one, particularly on the eve of a New Years Holiday weekend.
Which means we’re essentially awaiting to see what happens when Mr Market opens on Monday morning, January 3, 2022. I’m not sure things will open very positively next year, given the ridiculous prominence of Covid terrorism from the media and the government alike. It’s tended to dominate all business and political discussions lately, and it’s been responsible for scaring off at least some of this year’s traditional Santa Claus Rally.
Traders and investors: After this New Years Holiday weekend, be careful during the first trading week of 2022
2022 could, in fact, be an extraordinarily treacherous year for traders and investors alike. Anything we see via TV, cable or videos or read either online or via America’s vanishing newspapers and magazines will likely prove entirely oriented toward influencing the outcome of an increasingly important Election 2022.
The choice here is increasingly stark. We’ll either begin 2023 on the final leg of our long nightmare journey into a CCP-Soviet-style gulag dominated nation. Or we’ll begin to rescue our remaining freedoms and our badly damaged Constitution by throwing the Commies out of the government. Or at least out of Congress.
However things turn out in this coming election year will, along with the Fed’s belated attention to our near-hyperinflationary government policies, will increasingly influence stocks, bonds and consumer prices far more than charts and price-earnings ratios ever did.
Stay tuned. But things likely won’t get more serious until next week. So the logical thing to do is to spend most of our time planning how to blow out our upcoming New Years Holiday festivities and just have a good time. Thank goodness this horrible year of 2021 is nearly over at last.
Meanwhile, we’re trying to get our year-end bounce back list of stocks ready for public consumption. Probably tomorrow. Don’t miss it.
UPDATE:
As we suspected above, markets took a turn for the negative near Thursday’s 4 p.m. closing bell. All three major averages ended up slightly in the red for the day, with the Dow losing 90 points (- 0.25%) to end the day. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ took similar hits at the close. Credit the Thursday afternoon switcheroo to more CDC and media Covid terrorism headlines and a warning from Micron (NASDAQ: MU) that manufacturing problems in China might crimp its microchip output near term. For its part, the CDC simply warned Americans to forget about sailing on cruise ships, because Covid. A great, jolly and unnecessary way to end the year, for sure. But this type of reality deafness has characterized today’s CDC from the get-go of the Covid endemic. All this, plus low pre-holiday volume pushed market averages into the red.
We could see follow through Friday. Again, stay tuned.
