The cross-market holiday effect refers to “lower trading volume associated with one or more external markets not trading” (Batrinca, Hesse, & Treleaven, 2018, p. 675). Based on this concept, the main purpose of this paper was to test the effect of North American holidays on the volume traded in the Brazilian stock market during trading days in Brazil. We also evaluated the effect of North American holidays on daily stock returns of Brazilian firms. Based on data of 80 Brazilian company’s stocks over the period from January/2009 to December/2021, using ARMA-GARCH models, the main results indicate that the volume traded on the stocks of the sample was lower during North American holidays. On the other hand, for some stocks, their daily returns are higher when it is a holiday in the USA. Such results have implications for the theory of market efficiency, since there could be opportunities for obtaining abnormal returns based on calendar patterns. The main contribution of this paper is to analyze the cross-market holiday effect in the context of Brazilian stocks, expanding the literature on investments in emerging economies and considering trading activities of external markets.