One of the most entertaining things on Wall Street is the New York Stock Exchange. The dramatic looks when the market crashes and the ebullient camaraderie when the market soars.
Well, all of that is about to hit the pause button amid the Wuhan coronavirus.
The New York Stock Exchange announced that it is temporarily shutting down its trading floor and will move to electronic trading. This is the first time this has ever been done independently.
The facilities to be closed are the NYSE equities trading floor and NYSE American Options trading floor in New York, and NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco
This comes as two people tested positive Covid-19.
Stacey Cunningham, President of the NYSE, said in a statement:
“We implemented a number a number of safety precautions over the past couple of weeks, and starting on Monday this week we started pre-emptive testing of employees and screening of anyone who came into the building.
If that screening warranted additional testing, we tested people and they were sent home and not given access to the building. A couple of those test cases have come back positive.”
The full electronic trading is scheduled to start March 23.
Leave a Comment