Citing concerns over safety in downtown Manhattan, America's two biggest stock markets, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, won't reopen for trading until Friday at the earliest, according to several reports on Wednesday.
Trading, suspended in the wake of orchestrated terrorist attacks that leveled New York's World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., may not resume until Monday if the situation in Manhattan's financial district prevents the reopening of the NYSE, which is located just blocks from where the twin towers stood.
Trading in the U.S. Treasury market - one of the lynchpins of the global financial system - will resume trading on Thursday, according to a report on CNNfn.com.
The last time stock trading was closed for more than a day for anything other than a holiday was after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Constant trading creates liquidity in financial assets, which the markets value because the liquidity prevents sudden, severe price fluctuations.
Representatives of the major exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Commission and big brokerages met in midtown New York on Wednesday to assess the situation and discuss options. The Wall Street Journal reported that one option that may be discussed is that of moving the markets to regional exchanges, such as those in Philadelphia and Cincinnati.
