Financial markets to mark 9/11

Date: Friday, September 8, 2006
Author: Aaron Siegel, Investmentnews.com

On Monday, in various ways, financial markets and institutions will mark the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington.

The New York Stock Exchange will observe a moment of silence between 9:29 a.m. EDT and 9:30 a.m. EDT, after which Dr. Bruce D. Logan, president and chief executive of New York Downtown Hospital, will ring the opening bell.

Three blocks away from Ground Zero, Downtown Hospital treated over 1,500 patients in the wake of the collapse of the Twin Towers in spite of having lost electricity, steam, gas, phone, and computer services.

The American Stock Exchange will also observe silence between 9:29 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.

Nasdaq's MarketSite Tower in Times Square will broadcast the ceremony taking place at Ground Zero starting at 8:30 a.m. in lieu of an opening bell ceremony.

Nasdaq will also ask the trading community to refrain from trading between 10:29 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., in commemoration of the fall of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Anthony Coscia and executive director Kenneth Ringler, along with New York City Department of Transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall, will preside over Nasdaq's closing bell.

The Bond Market Association, based in New York and Washington, has recommended two moments of silence: at 8:46 a.m., when the first tower of the World Trade Center was hit, and at 10:29 a.m., when the second tower collapsed.

BMA says that those recommendations apply to those trading U.S. Government securities, mortgage- and asset-backed securities, over-the-counter investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, municipal bonds and secondary money market trading in bankers acceptances, commercial paper and Yankee and Euro certificates of deposit.

"Five years ago, nearly 1,000 bond market participants lost their lives in the terrible attacks of September 11th," said Bond Market Association president Michah S. Green, in a statement.

"We will always remember them and the many other victims of that tragic day."