All US exchanges shut down before Hurricane Sandy

NEW YORK (AP) – Oct 29, 10:25 AM EDT — U.S. stock mar­kets are closed as Hur­ri­cane Sandy nears land­fall on the East Coast and are likely to remain closed Tuesday.

The last time the New York Stock Exchange had an unplanned clos­ing was after the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sep­tem­ber 2001.

Dun­can Nieder­auer, the chief exec­u­tive of the exchange’s par­ent com­pany, NYSE Euronext, told CNBC Mon­day morn­ing that it was “hard to imag­ine” that the exchange would open on Tuesday.

Much of the East Coast was at a stand­still Mon­day as the storm approached. New York City’s mass tran­sit sys­tem was closed down and areas around the Finan­cial Dis­trict in lower Man­hat­tan were part of a manda­tory evac­u­a­tion zone. The storm surge from Sandy, which is due to make land­fall later Mon­day, is expected to push waters into por­tions of lower Manhattan.

A spokesman for the exchange said an offi­cial announce­ment would be made later Mon­day about whether the clo­sures would extend into Tues­day. If that hap­pens, it would be it would be the first time since 1888 that weather caused a two-day shut­down of the exchange. The cause then was a bliz­zard that left drifts as high as 40 feet in the streets of New York City.

There had been plans to allow elec­tronic trad­ing to go for­ward Mon­day on the New York Stock Exchange, but with all mass tran­sit shut down in and out of Man­hat­tan, the risks were deter­mined to be too great.

“My bias is always to keep the mar­kets open, but this was a pretty easy deci­sion,” Nieder­auer said on CNBC. “What I under­es­ti­mated … was how much peo­ple would have to staff up if we were oper­at­ing electronically.”

The Nas­daq and the CME Group in Chicago will also close. CME Group’s Nymex head­quar­ters and New York trad­ing floor are located in the manda­tory evac­u­a­tion zone in Man­hat­tan. Its New York trad­ing floor will be closed, but elec­tronic mar­kets were func­tion­ing. Crude oil fell 32 cents to $85.96 in elec­tronic trading.

Euro­pean stock mar­kets were mostly lower. Britain’s FTSE fell 0.3 per­cent and France’s CAC-40 fell 0.9 per­cent. Insur­ers such as Munich Re, Aviva PLC and Zurich Insur­ance fared worse than other stocks as investors wor­ried about the poten­tial cost of the storm’s damage.

“The eco­nomic impact can­not be under­es­ti­mated,” said Elsa Lig­nos, an ana­lyst at RBC Cap­i­tal Markets.

The uncer­tainty gen­er­ated by the storm comes at the start of a big week in the United States. This is the last full week before next Tuesday’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and cul­mi­nates Fri­day with the release of monthly jobs data, which many ana­lysts think could have an impact on the vote.

“A sig­nif­i­cant swing in either direc­tion is likely to be heav­ily reported in the media, poten­tially swing­ing the unde­cided voter,” said James Hughes, chief mar­ket ana­lyst at Alpari, of the jobs figures.

Some com­pa­nies are post­pon­ing quar­terly earn­ings reports sched­uled for release early this week. So far, that includes Pfizer Inc. and Thom­son Reuters. Burger King reported on sched­ule, and said its third-quarter net income fell 83 per­cent as rev­enue was hurt by the stronger dol­lar. Adjusted results topped expec­ta­tions, however.

Even though investors couldn’t do much about it, the U.S. gov­ern­ment did report a strong increase in con­sumer spend­ing last month.

The Com­merce Depart­ment reported that con­sumer spend­ing increased 0.8 per­cent in Sep­tem­ber. That fol­lowed a 0.5 per­cent gain in August and was the best show­ing since Feb­ru­ary. Per­sonal income rose 0.4 per­cent, an improve­ment from a slight 0.1 per­cent gain in August and the best gain since March. It’s a closely watched indi­ca­tor as con­sumer spend­ing dri­ves about 70 per­cent of the nation’s eco­nomic activity.

U.S. stock index futures fell slightly in thin trad­ing. By the time trad­ing ended at its reg­u­lar time of 9:15 a.m., Dow Jones indus­trial aver­age futures fell 61 points to 12,993 and S&P 500 futures fell five points to 1,402. Nas­daq futures fell 15 to 2,643.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Oct 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.