How the New York Stock Exchange helped America bounce back after 9/11
Markets reopened September 17th, 2001 and showed the world America was still standing.
"We will never forget."
Those words adorn the walls inside and outside the New York Stock Exchange today on September 11, twenty-four years after the World Trade Center attacks.
My friend Jay Woods — in 2001 a market maker on the trading floor and now chief strategist for Freedom Capital Markets — reminded me that September 17 marks another date worth remembering.
That was the morning the New York Stock Exchange reopened after the attacks.
US markets had been closed for four days, the longest halt since 1933. The world was still in shock. Professional sports hadn’t resumed. Airports remained empty.
Late-night TV hosts like Letterman and Leno had gone dark, unsure of how to make people laugh again.
And yet, in the financial center of the world, lights flickered back on.
“We got the building open and went back to work that day,” Woods told me after this morning’s opening bell ceremony. “It was a sign of resilience — you can knock America down but we’ll still get back to work.”
He said the motto at the time, “let freedom ring,” took on a greater meaning when the opening bell rang on September 17th, 2001.
Woods remembers commuting by boat into lower Manhattan that day with his colleagues. Armed guards greeted them at the dock, pressing American flags into their hands as they got off the boat.
Traders that morning walked through checkpoints into the exchange perimeter, past photographers, police and the smell of burning plastic and ash still rising from Ground Zero.
Once inside, Woods said he learned that two members of the exchange community had been killed in the attacks. In the absence of texts and social media, traders had scattered on 9/11 not knowing which colleagues had survived.
And yet, trading resumed.
Stocks fell more than 6% that day but no one seemed to mind the losses. The fact markets had opened at all told the world America was still standing.
In the days that followed, first-responders were invited to the exchange, meeting applause as they walked through the crowded trading floor.
As share prices declined, Woods said his clients called him not to ask why their stock was dropping but to check in to see if he was okay.
“Just going to work that day had a small part in bringing the country back after 9/11,” Woods said. “To be on the floor that day was one of the most patriotic things I’ve been involved with in 33 years.”
Phil Rosen
Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief, Opening Bell Daily
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