Friday is one of those strange days on the market calendar. The markets are closed for a religious holiday, Good Friday, but the U.S. government is alive and well and pushing out econ reports.
And Friday's top econ report is a major one: The monthly employment situation report. That's jobs created and the rate of unemployment. Surefire market movers if they come in contrary to expectations.
Yet people who trade stocks and options on the U.S. exchanges will be out of luck. They'll have no way to trade on the news.
Futures traders will have 45 minutes to trade the major indexes, as laid out in this fascinating read from Bloomberg.
For the rest of us, we can either take the day off -- a rested trader is an effective trader -- or use it for study and contemplation to help ourselves hone our trading techniques and theories. One good read to digest on this idle Friday is this overview by PIMCO's Mohamed El-Erian.
A third option is to use the day for activism. Why in the world should U.S. markets close on a day when the government is open? Write the New York Stock Exchange and urge them to update their trading calendar to match today's high-velocity world.
The NYSE Euronext contact page tells where to send your emails.
Call it, Occupy Good Friday.
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