How many trading daysare in a year?

"Trading day" means something different depending on what you trade. Stocks trade on an exchange with a published holiday calendar. Spot forex has no central exchange at all. Futures trade on an exchange, but most US holidays shorten the session rather than cancel it^[4].

Both years have 261 weekdays and 104 weekend days. Subtract NYSE's 10 full-closure holidays and you get 251. Early-close days are sessions, so they stay in the count.

Independence Day 2026 falls on a Saturday, so the market closes on Friday, July 3 instead. There is no early close before it^[1].

Three 2027 holidays land on a weekend and move: Juneteenth to Friday, June 18, Independence Day to Monday, July 5, and Christmas to Friday, December 24. New Year's Day 2028 falls on a Saturday, and NYSE observes no New Year's holiday for it - so Friday, December 31, 2027 is a normal trading day.^[1]

Between 19 and 22 across both years. The count moves with where weekends fall and which holidays land in the month.

Spot forex has no central exchange, so no single holiday calendar governs it. The weekly cycle runs 24 hours a day from Sunday 5:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. New York time^[3]. That makes the count the number of weekdays: 261 in 2026 and 261 in 2027.

Instead, each provider publishes its own holiday hours. If yours suspends trading on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, the arithmetic changes:

US futures on CME Globex trade almost around the clock: the week opens Sunday at 5:00 p.m. Central Time and closes Friday at 4:00 p.m. CT, with a 60-minute maintenance break each weekday afternoon^[4].

Holidays are where futures part company with stocks. On most US holidays, equity-index futures trade a shortened session with an early halt rather than closing. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2026, for example, the halt is at noon Chicago time^[5]. Good Friday, April 3, 2026 is listed as a full closure^[4].

So there is no single number for futures. Each session belongs to a trade date, and whether a holiday produces a short session or no session depends on the product. If you need an exact count - for a backtest, say - count trade dates for the specific contract from CME Group's own holiday calendar.

252 is a convention, not the count for any particular year. A calendar year has 260, 261 or 262 weekdays depending on where the weekends fall, and the US market closes on 9 or 10 of them. That puts the real figure between 250 and 253, and 252 sits in the middle.

It is a fine constant for converting daily figures to annual ones. It is the wrong number for a question about a specific year: 2026 and 2027 both have 251.

GFN does not impose its own trading schedule. Hours follow each instrument and the liquidity in it, and public holidays can bring late opens, early closes or closures - see the trading hours rules.

• No time limit on any evaluation, so a short holiday month costs you nothing but calendar time. See the time limit rule.
• Minimum trading days apply only on the 2 Step. You need 0.5% profit across at least 3 separate trading days. Instant and 1 Step have no minimum. See the minimum trading days rule.
• The payout cycle counts calendar days, not trading days. Every 14 days, from the first trade on the funded account. See how payouts work.