Some Wall Street traders booked hotels, while banks and brokerages prepared to get by with bare bones staffing, but major exchanges said it was business as usual as a potentially historic blizzard bore down on the northeast.
"We were told to go to skeletal staff before the afternoon," said Karl Haeling, vice president at Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg in New York. "Right now it's business as usual."
Brokers and dealers snapped up hotel rooms in Manhattan in anticipation of problems on the road and with public transportation due to the storm, which threatens to dump up to 3 feet (90 cm) of snow on the East Coast and disrupt travel for tens of millions of people. Intercontinental Exchange Inc's New York Stock Exchange unit, Nasdaq OMX Group , and BATS Global Markets said the exchanges they operate are currently expected to stay open for normal operating hours Monday and Tuesday.
The last time the stock markets closed due to weather was in October 2012 when Superstorm Sandy bore down on the East Coast, bringing flooding, punishing winds and widespread power outages that led to a two-day closure of U.S. stock markets.
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-- Reuters