FAQ Category: Holidays

It would not be advisable unless all the financial centers that you currently receive, as well as any you might order in the future, employ a Saturday-Sunday weekend.

Keep in mind that many countries do not employ a Saturday-Sunday weekend. Even countries that normally do so will sometimes turn one of these days into a working day. Also, countries periodically change their weekends.

Any future event that depends on human behavior carries an element of uncertainty. Holiday dates are no exception.

In general, the uncertainty is greater the further into the future the date in question. For example, Good Friday next year is almost 100% certain to be a holiday for London banks. But what about in 100 years’ time? Or 200 years? In both cases, Good Friday will probably still be a holiday, but the likelihood is substantially less than 100%.

Of course, there are many other factors in addition to time that contribute to the uncertainty.

We use a simple metric to decide whether a particular date should be a holiday—the probability. We assign probabilities to all future events, and we list a date as a holiday if the probability is greater than 50%.

Fundamentally, our data represents a prediction of future human behavior. In particular, the dates on which a group of people decide that they will or will not perform certain activities.

As such, the vast majority of centers do not have a single source. Rather, they reflect a portfolio of different and sometimes competing influences. These include:

• The underlying calendar (Gregorian, Muslim, Hindu, etc).
• The current holiday expectations on the part of the center itself.
• External factors (legislation, government mandate, etc).

It depends on your business needs, because we can customize the window to your specifications. Ask yourself the question, “At any point in time, what is the furthest into the future that I need to go?” For example, if you do 10-year interest rate swaps, you would probably want a 10 or 11-year window. On the other hand, if you do equity options with a life of three months, then a window of 100 or 110 days should suffice.

As a series of flat files via SFTP, or as a text string through an API.