This week the U.S. will celebrate its Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. This holiday always falls on a Thursday and for that day the markets will be closed. Friday the markets will open for a half day of trade, closing at 13:00. The half day is just to satisfy the rule that the markets cannot be closed for more than 3 calendar days.
Typically the week starts with many traders positioning for the week and then by Tuesday the markets begin to slow down. Since the holiday falls on a Thursday, many just take the "four day weekend" but some choose to leave earlier in the week. This becomes apparent by the slow movement that historically starts Tuesday. So if you plan to skip the Thanksgiving turkey and focus on trading where should you look?
For the short term and day traders the focus tends to be on the major indices and their ETF counterparts. Symbols like (NYSE: SPY), and the (NYSE: IWM) will remain steady with trading volume along with the Dow 30 ETF (NYSE: DIA) and the Nasdaq 100's most popular ETF (NASDAQ: QQQ). Remember that the day traders will only be looking for volume this week and aside from any unscheduled news releases, the major index ETF's will be an area they can count on.
Another area of the market that could provide some Thanksgiving excitement is the financial sector. Specifically the big financial stocks like JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and the like. This sector makes up over 33% of the S&P 500 so its long been known that wherever the banks go, the market is likely to follow. Day traders and the short term traders will certainly be keeping an eye out over here.
Lastly, just keep in mind that this is historically a low volume week and trading should be muted. All will return to normal next week and continue until we reach the Christmas and New Years holidays at the end of the year.