Year-end market holidays 2022 — what to expect

As the holidays are rapidly approaching, you'll likely want to ensure you’re on top of your trades. Seasonality greatly impacts how financial markets perform. Before the holidays, there is a seasonal market trend called the pre-holiday effect, when the markets usually experience higher volatility than on regular trading days.

To help you prepare and refine your trading strategies, here’s what you can expect this upcoming holiday season.

Stock market

During the holidays, stock prices fluctuate due to several contributing factors, including

• the number of active traders
• the end of a financial quarter for companies (when they rebalance their portfolios based on which investments performed well or poorly)
• investors selling their unprofitable shares 

With the expected rises and dips in price movements this time of the year, most traders rely on technical and fundamental analysis to study the seasonal stock trend of a particular asset to strategise better.

Stock exchanges holiday calendar

Stock markets are only open for trading on normal business days — Monday to Friday. Listed below are the holiday schedules of some of the major stock indices that we offer.

*Stocks and stock indices can be traded on Deriv MT5 and Deriv Trader, Deriv Bot, and SmartTrader.

Forex market

The forex market is the world's largest financial market, with a daily trading volume of over 6 trillion US dollars. It’s dominated by financial companies, hedge funds (also known as offshore investment funds), and banks.

These key market players are absent during the holiday season, resulting in lower liquidity. Their absence also leads to heightened volatility with higher chances of false breakouts, which some traders find unrewarding as there’s less potential for gains.

In a decentralised market like forex, there is no way of knowing how prices will move, so trading under such unpredictable market conditions can be challenging. Most traders rely on technical and fundamental analysis to study forex price movements.

*Forex can be traded on Deriv MT5, Deriv X, DTrader, DBot, and SmartTrader.

Commodities

The holiday season generates a high demand for commodities — from natural resources to precious metals — resulting in bullish markets that most traders take advantage of. This demand increase strengthens their prices, paving the way for more potential positive returns.

*Commodities can be traded on Deriv MT5, Deriv X, Deriv Trader, Deriv Bot, and SmartTrader.

Other markets

Cryptocurrencies and synthetic indices are the markets that never sleep. On Deriv, these markets are available to trade 24/7, even throughout the holiday seasons and on public holidays.

*Cryptocurrencies can be traded on Deriv MT5, Deriv X, and Deriv Trader. Synthetics can be traded on Deriv MT5, Deriv X, Deriv Bot, Deriv Trader, and SmartTrader.

Important: We’re open for business throughout the holiday season. The schedules mentioned are for guidance only and are subject to change.