For those looking to trade or at least watch the tape rather than scope out deals, the day after Thanksgiving provides a limited window. After taking the day off for turkey and the fixings, a seeming skeleton crew of traders return for an abbreviated Black Friday session, with U.S. stocks closing at 1 p.m. Eastern and bonds shutting down an hour later.
The table above from Dow Jones Market Data takes a look at the last 73 Black Fridays (excluding today, of course) and finds that the post-holiday session has produced a rally 70% of the time, for an average gain of around 0.3%. More recently, however, the performance has been a bit less impressive, producing a fall of nearly 0.3% on average over the last 10 years and just shy of 0.1% over the last 20.