#SEC closes for Juneteenth, markets to remain open

The Securities and Exchange Commission will remain closed Friday in observance of the new federal holiday Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the US, the agency announced.

That means publicly traded companies will not be able to submit filings to the SEC, barring them from making major announcements until Monday.

A spokesperson for the agency noted that exchanges set their own hours and decide when to close for federal holidays. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are both set to open Friday as expected at 9:30 a.m. and close at 4 p.m.

The exchanges are closed on most federal holidays, except for Columbus Day and Veterans Day.

Juneteenth, which President Biden declared a federal holiday on Thursday, marks June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, to officially liberate the last enslaved African Americans.

It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983. Along with the SEC, most federal workers will get Friday off in commemoration of the day.

“By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, all Americans can feel the power of this day and learn from our history, and celebrate progress and grapple with the distance we’ve come, and the distance we have to travel,” Biden said when signing the bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday into law.

With Post wires