Hurricane Sandy has caused more
destruction than imagined with thousands without power across the region,
flooding of the New York subway, at
least 40 deaths, 3 feet of snow in West Virginia and the NYSE closed for
two days. The NYSE has been closed for two days due to weather for
the first time
since 1888 and the
Great Blizzard of 1888. And you did not have computers and the
Internet in 1888 and also the motor car was yet to be commercialized and weather forecasting was a nascent science.
As Arthur
Levitt former Chairman of the SEC says, this will shake the image of the NYSE. No one is saying that safety of the traders
or exchange employees is not important, but with a back-up plan the seat of
world capitalism should not have to shut down for two days. Obviously the NYSE
did not have confidence in a back-up "mirror" type of arrangement for
electronic trading through the NYSE Acra all electronic platform. As the
video explains it was just that NYSE did not have the stomach to face technical
problems running the exchange electronically during Hurricane Sandy. NYSE folks
continue to be nervous after the Facebook IPO problems and the Knight
Capital Group trading software problems. Perhaps it is timely to do
whatever is necessary to have back-up arrangements so that an institution like
NYSE is not shut down for two days from a predicted weather event. Contact
StratoServe.