NYSE Kicks Out Humans, Moving Temporarily To Fully Electronic Trading

Just in case the NYSE trading floor, which in the past decade became better known for being a TV studio for various financial networks wasn’t enough of a ghost town, starting Monday not a single trader, or TV anchor, will be present at the historic downtown NYC venue after at least one person tested positive for covid.

In a notification posted late on Wednesday, the NYSE said it would initiate its business continuity plan and move, on a temporary basis, to fully electronic trading on Monday, March 23. The decision to temporarily close the trading floors represents a “precautionary step to protect the health and well-being of employees and the floor community in response to COVID-19.”

“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,” said Stacey Cunningham, President of the New York Stock Exchange.

“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.”

Trading and regulatory oversight of all NYSE-listed securities will continue without interruption. All-electronic trading will begin with Monday’s market open.

The facilities to be closed comprise the NYSE equities trading floor in New York, NYSE American Options trading floor in New York, and NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco.

There will be no change to the real NYSE exchange floor, located in Mahwah, NJ and which is populated only by algos, collocated servers, microwave towers and lasers.