When business finally resumes on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange--the most famous 36,000 square feet of space in the financial world--the brokers and traders who work there will know that more than a century of history and their very way of life will be on the line.
"Being inside the exchange building will be difficult," said James A. Jacobson, a leading trader and former NYSE board member. "People are going to relive harrowing experiences. But it's something we all have to do."
In the generations since the NYSE's unique trading system emerged, it has faced down countless challenges--political, financial and technological. In the 1980s and '90s, for example, electronic and computerized trading threatened to supplant the NYSE's face-to-face auction process. By the millennium, however, the Big Board had widened its lead as the world's dominant stock market.
But last week's attack may revive some of the old questions, not only because it heightened concerns about the vulnerability of any large gathering of people, but because the chaos has provoked the longest shutdown of NYSE trading since before World War II.
The key question is this: In an era when information can circle the globe at the speed of light, why should $20 billion a day in investment transactions be forced to come to this location to be handled in person by a cadre of 3,000 professionals?
"Do we have the appropriate trading infrastructure in 2001, given the threat of terrorism?" asked Junius Peake, a finance professor at the University of Northern Colorado and an expert on electronic trading systems. "My answer is no. No other country in the world has emulated the New York Stock Exchange's physical facility."
When trading resumes, the paramount challenge will be logistical--the sheer complexity of moving about 125,000 workers into the financial district of lower Manhattan, where the communications, transport, service and utility infrastructure has been severely damaged. Work space is another problem. About 20 million square feet of office space was destroyed in and around the World Trade Center towers, which housed 40,000 workers.
Financial and service firms already have made arrangements to move the functions performed in those buildings to New Jersey, Long Island and elsewhere. If the relocation becomes permanent--as it well might, given the obstacles to rebuilding on the Trade Center site--that could lead to a decline of Manhattan's status as the premier financial center.
