How to profit from the 2016 Stock Market Holiday Hours
Here are some tips for you on how to profit from the 2016 Stock Market Holiday Hours.
It’s the beginning of a new year for Wall Street. The arrival of 2016 provides a new opportunity for day traders, swing traders, penny stock traders and momentum traders to begin a new year with a clean slate. The first step on how to profit from the 2016 stock market holiday hours is to know what the hours are!
Here are the 2016 stock market holiday hours:
2016 Stock Market Holiday Hours | |
New Year’s Day | January 1 |
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day | January 18 |
Washington’s Birthday | February 15 |
Good Friday | March 25 |
Memorial Day | May 30 |
Independence Day | July 4 |
Labor Day | September 5 |
Thanksgiving Day | November 24* |
Christmas Day | December 25 (Observed December 26) |
Now that you know the stock market holidays it’s time to go over a few steps you can take to use the holidays to your advantage.
Step 1: Take a break from the stock market?
Whether you are a new trader or a seasoned veteran you have probably heard that taking the holidays off is a good idea. While this makes sense for those that are overwhelmed or burned out from trading it makes absolutely no sense for those of us who are “type A personality” active traders! For us, the best thing we can do is take advantage of the holidays to gain an edge over other traders. After all, isn’t that the whole point of trading?
Step 2: Use the holiday hours to create a stock journal and reflect on what went right and what went wrong prior to the holidays
When you create a stock journal it forces you to reflect on what actually happened. As an analogy, imagine two different people with two separate dieting strategies. Person 1 decides to go on a diet and simply tries their best to say on it. Person 2 goes on the same diet but creates a diet journal. In their journal they record each day’s calorie consumption. They log how many hours of exercise they completed each day and record any weight loss or gain at the end of each day. Who do think would have a better chance at succeeding in the diet? It’s the same for traders. Keep a journal and know what is working and what is not working at the end of each trading day.
Step 3: Research Future Stock Picks
The stock market holidays gives you extra time to research future stocks. Use the time to your advantage. Look at the previous closing day and see where things ended up. Look at the biggest gainers and the largest losers. Find out why the stocks ended up the way they did and gather data to predict future movement of those stocks.
Step 4: Read the news
During the stock market holiday hours you have more time to follow both the macro and micro news that pertains to your stocks. It doesn’t matter if you are a penny stock trader or a blue chip stock trader the news can and will have an impact on your stocks following the holiday. It simply makes more sense that you know what’s going on versus those traders who decide to take a break from the action.
Step 5: Visit stock message boards
Stock market holidays provide extra time to visit the stock boards to see what’s going on. Even though the stock market may be closed the stock message boards are often flowing smoothly during stock holidays. They often contain information that you need to know. Of course there are people on the boards that are full of you know what but use your own judgement and gather any intel you can from the boards.
In closing, taking advantage of stock market holiday hours simply makes sense. If anyone has any other suggestions or comments on how to take better advantage of the stock market holidays please feel free to do so below. After all, as a free stock market community it is our goal at The Trade Locker to help one another become better traders without trying to take advantage of each other. If you have not done so already please sign up for our forever free membership here. I’d like to wish you all the best of luck in the year 2016!