US will not close equity markets, White House vows to support economy

United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin told a press conference in Washington, D.C. that the government has no plans to close the equity markets.

“We absolutely believe in keeping the markets open,” he said. “Americans need to have access to their money”.  A reduction in hours is possible he noted, though it is not clear what a shortened day might be. Normal NYSE hours are 9:30 am to 4:00 pm EDT. “Everybody want to keep it open,” he said.

Last NYSE closure

The last time the NYSE was closed was in 2012 when much of the Wall Street financial district was flooded by Hurricane Sandy.  

Though it is treated as a rarity the NYSE has ceased operations more than 100 times over the last century for many, many different reasons.

In 1914 the market closed for three months as World War One began. After the market crash of 1929 and the start of the Depression the NYSE halted 23 times in the next decade but not only for financial reasons.  The stoppages include pauses to mark the deaths of President Taft and Coolidge, and that of King George V of England, the last British monarch to be honored. After the Second World War trading was shuttered by a railroad strike, President Kennedy’s assassination and several computer snafus.

9/11

 After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on the morning of Tuesday September 11^th, 2001 which struck just before the 9:30 am start of trading, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq did not open and remained closed for four days until Monday September 17^th. 

The NYSE is just a few blocks from the collapsed Twin Towers and downtown streets were strewn with debris from the buildings and the entire Wall Street district was closed.  Many trading firms had offices in the World Trade Centers and hundreds of their employees were killed and their operations devastated when the structures fell.

On the first day of reopened NYSE trading the Dow fell 684 points, then the largest loss in history but not even in the top ten percentage declines.  By the end of the week the Dow was down over 14% and the S&P 500 index has lost 11.6%.

Dow 2001-2003

CNBC

Airline, tourism and travel sector stocks were especially hard hit, but hotels and hospitality, entertainment and financial services also saw large losses.

Some sectors prospered. Technology companies, defense contractors, pharmaceutical and communications firms rose as the country prepared to enter the war on terror proclaimed by President George Bush.

Within one month the Dow had regained all but a few of the points lost from the 9/11 attacks.

Financial crisis

In 2008 and 2009 as the financial crisis played out and the government and the Federal Reserve were forced to rescue several banks and financial institutions and then intervene in the markets and the economy in unprecedented ways, the NYSE stayed open throughout more than a year of turmoil.                                                                   

The largest post-war one day percentage decline in the Dow remains the 22.4% loss, 508 points, on Black Monday October 19, 1987.  The NYSE did not close and the Dow rose 102.27 points in the next session, a one-day record.  It took two years for the market to fully recover its losses.  The greatest on day percentage loss was on December 12^th, 1914 when  the Dow dropped 23.5%.