Stock Market Readies to Resume

"Based on today`s evaluation of our systems ... at 9:30 Monday morning trading will resume," NYSE chairman Richard A. Grasso said.

Telephone and utility workers continued reconnecting services Saturday, but "our system are all go," Grasso said at an early afternoon news conference.

The NYSE, Nasdaq Stock Market and American Stock Exchange have been closed since Tuesday, when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center`s twin towers and forced the shutdown of the city`s financial district. All three markets plan to reopen on Monday.

The NYSE chairman said the exchange would observe two minutes of silence before the start of trading to honor the thousands of people believed killed in the trade center attack and another assault on the Pentagon. He said those on the exchange floor would also join in singing "God Bless America."

With trading set to resume, a remaining question is how the market, already fragile due to the weakened economy, will react to the terrorist attacks. Grasso joined some market analysts in predicting that trading will be orderly, and that investors will be restrained, not panicky.

"I would suggest that investors have had this time frame to step back and take a reasoned approach, a thoughtful approach, to their investments," he said.

The NYSE, located about five blocks from the trade center, was not damaged in the attack. But a telephone switching operation was knocked out, severing some of the communications systems used in trading. And a number of investment firms suffered damage that forced them to relocate some of their operations.

Grasso said most investment firms are now able to link with the exchange, and that by Monday, there should be "some connectivity to everyone who does business."

"I`m very confident that even those who sustained significant losses will be in some part back in business Monday morning," he said.

According to Grasso, the investment firms said Wednesday they could resume trading, but "it was far more important from a human standpoint to make sure that nothing we did as a business interrupted the brave men and women" trying to rescue victims of the attack.

The nation`s other major stock market, the Nasdaq, is electronically-based and was not damaged in the attacks.

About $100 billion worth of trades are conducted every day in the United States, bringing the estimated losses from the shutdown to $400 billion, according to the Securities Industry Association. Investment firms suffered many millions of dollars more in damage.

(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Author: 6 - ABC, Action News