Looks like it won’t have much of an effect from an operational standpoint – Wall St. Misses Blackout; Some Companies Shut Down:
For the nation’s stock markets, the disruption could have come at a much worse time. It happened just minutes after the end of a slow summer trading day, leaving traders and the exchanges more than 16 hours to regroup and reopen this morning. The biggest brokerage houses on Wall Street reported no significant problems in the first few hours. Several said that their backup power systems had kicked on almost immediately, allowing them to continue processing the day’s trades and to settle their books.
The bond market surged when investors hurriedly bought Treasury debt, a traditional haven in times of turmoil. The yield on five-year Treasury notes, which moves in the opposite direction of prices, dropped in the early moments of the blackout, but then retraced about half of that move before the session ended at 5 p.m.
The New York Stock Exchange canceled its two, brief after-hours trading sessions during which orders to buy and sell stocks are matched up at the day’s closing prices. A spokesman for the exchange, Ray Pellecchia, said no data had been lost because of the blackout and the exchange was able to transmit official closing prices for stocks to the media.
“We expect to be open for trading tomorrow, using generator power if necessary,” he said.
