The U.S. stock market will be closed for Labor Day on Monday, Sept. 4, along with the roughly $25 trillion Treasury market, giving workers an extra day for a long holiday weekend.
Labor Day typically represents the last blast of summer before school starts back up. Wall Street tends to mark the holiday by prepping billions of dollars in corporate bonds to sell for investors. This year, a $15.4 billion flurry of “junk-rated” bonds and loans are being lined up for sale, according to Bloomberg.
The market backdrop heading into the fall has been surprisingly strong and still without a recession. Despite a modest pullback in August, U.S. equities were still nearing record levels, with the AI-craze helping push up some technology stocks, including shares of Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP was up 34.1% on the year through Thursday, scoring its best eight months before Labor Day in a year since 2003, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It was the strongest such stretch for the S&P 500 SPX and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA since 2021.
Labor Day this year will be notable as well of the renewed focus on labor and strikes, in particular, or as MarketWatch’s Levi Sumagaysay puts it: Strikes beget strikes.
Listen: Revitalized unions ignite ‘hot labor summer’
Friday’s jobs report for Augusto showed a slowdown in hiring and an uptick in the unemployment rate to 3.8%, the highest level in a year and a half.
This Labor Day also ushers in a fresh push to get more workers back to the office, including by the federal government, starting in September and October. But with interest rates at a 22-year high and the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y above 4%, it isn’t a cure-all for the reeling office sector.
Read: Labor Day is just a ‘milestone’ in the marathon to get workers back to the office
