Close the Markets? Data and Psychology Say Maybe
Any attempt to put a price on stocks now is guesswork, and confidence is on the floor.
It would be the first unscheduled closure since 9/11.
Photographer: Jean-Michel TURPIN/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
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No institutions in modern life have adapted social distancing more enthusiastically than financial markets. Thirty years ago, stock and commodities exchanges worked through large numbers of traders (mostly young and almost all men) gathering together in a confined space. Now, stock exchanges are quiet and dull places, with few people, and little noise above the slight hum of the computers. If any industry has already prepared itself for life under the coronavirus, it should be the capital markets.