US stock markets plan to resume trading Monday, six days after a terrorist attack destroyed the World Trade Center and forced the closure of New York's financial district. The halt in trading will be the longest since 1933.
Chiefs of the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ Stock Market said they needed time to ensure their computers and communications networks were prepared to handle the roughly 3 billion shares traded on an average day. They also don't want to interfere with the search for 4,763 people reported missing less than six blocks away in the rubble of the twin towers.
Trading systems will be put through their electronic paces today as a final check on whether the opening bell will ring at 9:30am Monday, bringing 143 hours of market paralysis to an end. NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso said he's confident the test will succeed.
PHOTO: AP
Many investors said the delay until Monday makes sense.
"Given the magnitude of the damage and the issues of infrastructure, there's more work to be done," said Leo Smith, head of trading at Putnam Investments Inc, which manages US$400 billion in Boston.
"There are a number reasons that I don't believe things will be that bad," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at First Albany Corp. "We have moved beyond the emotional stage when investors are very panicky. And we have talked to a number institutional investors and the feedback is that if there is any meaningful weakness in the market, they will be buyers. They feel the market is undervalued."
Financial leaders and public officials have been pushing to open the markets as a symbolic and economic step for the US after the terrorists' blow. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the city will open a "corridor through the financial district" so the NYSE's 4,500 workers can get to the exchange. Specialist firms, which oversee trading, have been testing their electronic systems.
Maintenance workers have hosed down facades along Wall Street, cleansing them of dust generated by the trade center's collapse.
"We want to get the markets back up and running as soon as possible," said Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Still, there are hurdles.
Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Corp say they haven't been able to restore complete data and phone services to the financial district. A Verizon call-routing fa`cility that provides 20 percent of the area's service was severely damaged.
"We have steel beams coming through the basement," said Verizon vice chairman Lawrence Babbio.
Verizon has hundreds of workers in lower Manhattan, many of them laying temporary fiber-optic cable to reroute phone and data traffic, working underground where manholes are not covered by rubble.
The American Stock Exchange, two blocks from the World Trade Center, may not open Monday, officials said. The building doesn't have water or power and air units are clogged with soot.
"The roof is covered with soot and dust and until that's cleaned up we can't get clean air circulating through the building." said Bob Rendine, an Amex spokesman.
If the Amex can't open Monday, the NYSE may allow the Amex to use part of the NYSE's floor, Grasso said. The Amex has also talked to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange about that exchange temporarily trading Amex options.
The NASDAQ Stock Market issued a statement that the possible collapse of its New York headquarters at One Liberty Plaza won't affect its opening because market operations are in Connecticut and Maryland.
Trading has been shut since Tuesday's attack that flattened the twin 110-story towers and forced the evacuation of the financial district. "No desire to resume trading will ever take precedence to the desire to find every possible human being that is buried in that mass," Grasso said.
Securities firms near the trade center are operating from remote "disaster recovery sites," said NASDAQ Chairman Hardwick Simmons, some across the Hudson River in New Jersey. The systems linking those sites to the markets must be fully tested, Simmons said.
"It's like bypass surgery on your communications systems," said Robert Fagenson, vice chairman of Van der Moolen Specialists USA, the NYSE's fifth-largest specialist firm.
Bond trading resumed today. For fixed income, there is no equivalent to the New York Stock Exchange floor, where trading is centered. Investors and brokers trade bonds via computer and telephone lines.
The SEC will set up hotlines for securities firms and investors to ask questions about trading practices, said Pitt.
The last time that US stock trading was suspended for more than two sessions occurred in March 1933, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for a nationwide bank holiday to prevent a run on the banks.
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