A reader wondered why we bother keeping the Toronto Stock Exchange open when markets in the United States are closed for Thanksgiving.

That sent us wandering over to the Bloomberg terminal to find out how Toronto's benchmark index has performed on the U.S. holiday, going back to 1998. And guess what? The Canadian market closed higher every time.[amp]nbsp; The average gain is 0.81 per cent, not far from where the S[amp]amp;P/TSX is trading Thursday afternoon (up 0.63 per cent).

The best of the days was 1.14 per cent, in 1999. The worst was in 2002, when it eked out a 0.38 per cent gain.