Wall Street turned on emergency power and stock trading was sharply reduced last night after massive power cuts hit New York, other cities in the northeastern United States and parts of Canada.
The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are set to open today as usual, and most major Wall Street firms said contingency plans were working well and that emergency power generators were running smoothly.
There was some uncertainty among traders about whether trading would resume normally today and whether the outage, which came shortly after the official close of trading, might disrupt the settlement of trades overnight.
US power regulators said the electricity cut was not caused by a terror attack, but traders said Wall Street was still a bit edgy.
One trader said that among the biggest problems Wall Street was facing was processing trades overnight for options set to expire today.
If power is restored by the time US stock markets are scheduled to open at 2.30 a.m. Irish time, there will likely be little impact on the financial markets, traders said.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission said it was carefully monitoring the power failure and was in regular communication with the markets and clearing agencies.