Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE) announced on Wednesday that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) will temporarily move to fully electronic trading beginning Monday, March 23. All NYSE facilities will be closed as part of this new development. This includes the equities and options trading floors in New York and the NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco.
The change comes as concerns over spread of the coronavirus from China rise. And in turn, more people are calling for social distancing between people as much as possible.
That said, all-electronic trading will start with at market open on Monday. Intercontinental Exchange said it will continue to monitor events to determine the appropriate time to re-open the NYSE trading floors.
Stacey Cunningham, president of the New York Stock Exchange, had this to say regarding the latest update:
“NYSE’s trading floors provide unique value to issuers and investors, but our markets are fully capable of operating in an all-electronic fashion to serve all participants, and we will proceed in that manner until we can re-open our trading floors to our members. While we are taking the precautionary step of closing the trading floors, we continue to firmly believe the markets should remain open and accessible to investors. All NYSE markets will continue to operate under normal trading hours despite the closure of the trading floors.”
There is currently no timetable for the facilities re-opening.
Nick Clarkson is a web editor at InvestorPlace. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
