The United States stock markets will be closed on Wednesday, June 19 in observance of Juneteenth. Both the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange will be closed on June 19 and will reopen on Thursday, June 20. The U.S. bond market will also be closed according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
While most restaurants, grocery and retail stores will remain open on the holiday, banks and the United States Postal Service will be closed. Juneteenth, also known as America’s Second Independence Day, has been a federally-recognized holiday since 2021. This provides millions of Americans with a paid day off to commemorate the end of slavery.
Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas with 2,000 Union troops to proclaim that more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were free. This proclamation came two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.
After the Juneteenth closure, business will resume as usual on Wall Street until early July. The next scheduled closure for the stock market is on Thursday, July 4 in observance of Independence Day.