NYSE TRADING FLOOR REOPENS AFTER 2-MONTH LOCKDOWN

After operating remotely for the first time in its history on March 23, 2020, the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) reopened on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 with mask-wearing and social distancing required, Business Insider reported.

Traders were seen on Tuesday morning getting their temperatures taken before being allowed to enter the building. In addition to wearing masks and keeping distance from other traders, employees on the floor are also being asked to avoid taking public transportation, the Wall Street Journal said.

On May 25, 2020, The Economist Today said: “But America’s biggest and best-known stock exchange has not quite shaken off its past. Even as its peers in Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Toronto and Mumbai have abandoned their trading floors, the NYSE has retained its famous pit and human criers. Most of NYSE’s volume now flows electronically through a data centre in suburban New Jersey, but nearly a fifth is still traded by floor brokers at its 117-year-old Wall Street headquarters.”

The exchange’s stubborn adherence to the trading floor may owe as much to marketing as to efficiency or the claim that personal trading reduces volatility. “NYSE is promoting an image of ‘the premium exchange,’” said Marius Zoican, a professor at the University of Toronto who studies securities markets. “It’s historic, it still has the famous building, the human touch,” The Economist Today quoted the professor as saying. The exchange can claim its prices reflect the perfect blend of human intuition and machine precision.