America's bloodiest day
Wall Street looks to reopen tomorrow
By Lisa Singhania
Associated Press
NEW YORK — The nation's financial markets, regrouping after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, will start returning to work today, but officials said a resumption of stock trading will occur no earlier than tomorrow.
Officials of the stock markets, investment firms and the Securities and Exchange Commission met yesterday and announced at an afternoon news conference that stock trading would begin again by Monday, but not before Friday. Trading was called off shortly after the Tuesday morning attack that left the trade center in ruins.
New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard A. Grasso said a final decision on when trading would resume would be made at a meeting of officials today.
Other financial markets with no physical plant in New York's Lower Manhattan financial district planned to get back to trading today. The NYSE is located about five blocks from the trade center site.
Treasury Undersecretary Peter Fisher, who also spoke at the news conference, said government bond trading would start at 8 a.m. EDT today. Earlier, officials of the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where futures contracts are traded, said they would be open for business today.
It was not known when trading would resume at the New York Mercantile Exchange, located near the trade center in a complex known as the World Financial Center.
Grasso said the securities officials wanted to avoid doing anything that would interrupt the recovery operation at the trade center site.
"Our first and primary concern is restoring the public's confidence that this marketplace ... will be up and functioning — and no one can interrupt that resolve," he said.
The Treasury Department said it supported the decision of the stock markets to remain closed today.
"While the nation's financial infrastructure is strong and intact, concerns remain regarding limited acess to the financial district in lower Manhattan due to rescue operations currently under way. This is the wisest course of action at this time," it said in a statement.
The proximity of the NYSE's trading floor to the World Trade Center has been the major obstacle to a resumption of trading. The Nasdaq Stock Market has no similar physical presence; it is a completely electronic system.
When trading resumes, the shutdown on the NYSE, the nation's oldest exchange, will have been the longest since a weeklong closing in the aftermath of the 1929 crash.
The trade center and the NYSE are located in the area known as the Financial District, home to dozens of investment houses and brokerages. The trade center's twin 110-story towers, among the tallest skyscrapers in the world and a distinctive part of the city's skyline, collapsed Tuesday after two hijacked jetliners crashed into them, scattering debris throughout the area.
