Wall Street back to 'business as usual' as storm wanes
By John McCrank and Lauren Tara LaCapra NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street was largely back to business as usual on Tuesday after a storm that had threatened to blanket New York with a few feet of snow ended up dumping several inches instead. Major U.S. stock and bond markets were open, with trading volumes higher than they had been the previous day, when ominous weather forecasts and transit shutdowns put a chill on business activity. "The storm was a bit of a bust," Jamie Selway, managing director and head of electronic brokerage at Investment Technology Group, said on Tuesday morning. ITG had between 10 and 15 essential personnel staying in hotels in lower Manhattan overnight Monday to make sure they would have enough people on Tuesday. The New York Stock Exchange, a unit of Intercontinental Exchange Inc, was open for business as usual along with Nasdaq OMX Group Inc, BATS Global Markets and U.S. bond markets. Investment banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co's JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley were open as well. At least one initial public offering, Zosano Pharma Corp, made its debut on Tuesday. S&P e-minis futures volume reached 1.6 million by late afternoon, compared with 1.83 million, on average, in the past 14 days. The trading volume was already higher than full day for Monday and Friday. On the Chicago Board of Trade, part of CME Group Inc, bond trading volume also came in below average with a little more than 1 million contracts in 10-year Treasury note futures changing hands. But it was still a higher level than Monday's full-day volume, which was below 1 million. The massive storm was still pounding much of New England but delivered a softer-than-forecast punch to the greater New York area. Less than a foot (30 cm) of snow fell in Central Park, versus the 2 to 3 feet predicted as the storm advanced on the area on Monday. Transit systems in the region were shut down on Monday, but subway service resumed in the city on Tuesday morning. Railway systems serving the suburbs remained largely shut down, so some employees were still working from home. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said a travel ban in the region had been lifted at 7:30 a.m. EST (1230 GMT). Even though the snow was anticlimactic in New York, finance workers said events had to be canceled, postponed or shifted from in-person meetings to Skype calls. For instance, a group of quantitative analysts that meets regularly at a pub in Manhattan to talk algorithms over beers had to postpone its first event for 2015. The group, which calls itself "QWAFAFEW" - pronounced "quaff a few" - was supposed to get together on Tuesday but will meet on Thursday instead. "I got enough people saying, 'I hope you're going to move it," said Herbert Blank, chair of the New York chapter of QWAFAFEW, which stands for Quantitative Work Alliance for Applied Finance, Education and Wisdom. "If only five people showed up, it wouldn't be good." (Reporting by John McCrank and Lauren Tara LaCapra; additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Richard Leong; Writing by Dan Burns and Dan Wilchins; Editing by Franklin Paul, Lisa Von Ahn and Lisa Shumaker)
