The SEC says there will be no trading on any securities exchanges today including the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market, after two planes crashed into downtown New York’s World Trade Center, causing both towers to collapse.
Federal regulators of the U.S. financial markets, the CFTC, have decided not to declare an emergency in response to an apparent terrorist attack Tuesday on landmark buildings in New York and Washington, because most U.S. stock and futures exchanges are already closed. The CFTC will recommend that any U.S. futures exchanges that are still trading temporarily shut down their operations. The dollar continues to trade on FOREX as well as gold and some U.S. shares on foreign exchanges.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was out of the country attending a banking conference in Switzerland at the time of Tuesday’s attacks, a Fed official said.
In the aftermath of the blasts, investors reacted on the markets open for trading; debt and commodities markets. Crude oil in London surged to an eight-month high rising as much as $3.60, or 13.1 percent, to $31.05 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange, its biggest one-day gain since March 23, 1998. Oil last fetched more than $31 a barrel last Dec. 1. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasuries rose in a "knee-jerk panic," according to Banc One Capital Markets Inc. economist Anthony Karydakis. The 30-year bond rose 1 1/2, or $15 per $1,000 security, to 99 18/32, lowering yields 10 basis points to 5.34 percent.
U.S. securities markets have decided not to open for trading, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt said.
Several top financial services firms have offices in the World Trade Center, including Morgan Stanley, Switzerland’s Credit Suisse Group and Germany’s Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank AG . Market data firm Thomson Financial also has offices in the complex.
Charles Schwab Corp. , which is based in San Francisco, has a branch in the World Trade Center, but its employees seemed to get out of the building after the first plane crash, spokesman Glen Mathison told Reuters.
Schwab is telling its Bay Area workers to go home or not come to work as a precaution, he said.
“We are hopeful all of our employees in our Wall Street and Tower offices are fine,” Mathison said. Not all of the workers have been accounted for, he said, because it has been hard to get through on the phone. Telecommunications service providers have said their networks remain open but are clogged with calls.
Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Britain’s Barclays Plc has evacuated its downtown Manhattan offices located less than a mile from the World Trade Center, according to a company spokesman.
Employees at the World Financial Center, located just west of the World Trade Center and housing the offices of firms including Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. and American Express Co. , did not answer phone calls put into their offices.
A phone call to the main number at the World Financial Center went unanswered.
“Whole downtown shook”, said one employee at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which has headquarters and offices downtown.
Many financial services firms have moved their headquarters from lower Manhattan to midtown but still maintain trading operations close to the Wall Street area.
