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WALL STREET All major U.S. stock exchanges were shuttered Monday as areas around New York's Financial District came under a mandatory evacuation order. The shutdown was extended through Tuesday, marking the first time since 1888 that the exchange will have been closed for two consecutive days because of weather. Originally, the NYSE had planned to close just its exchange floor and allow traders to buy and sell stock electronically. Then it decided to shut down electronic trading, too. The NYSE said it was worried about putting staff who were needed to help run the electronic trading in danger. NYSE Chief Operating Officer Larry Leibowitz said he also was worried about low trading volumes due to many investors taking the day off. The fear is that just a few trades could whip stock around like the storm outside, sending prices surging one minute or plunging the next. As automatic trading by computers has come to dominate stock trading, it was a fear voiced by other Wall Street experts. Some companies, including Pfizer Inc. and Thomson Reuters, postponed quarterly earnings reports scheduled for release early this week. CME Group's New York trading floor was closed, but its electronic markets for commodities were functioning. CME said electronic trading for commodities would also be open Tuesday. Bond trading again will be closed. AUTOS The effect on auto sales may be minimal, some analysts say. Many people who planned to buy cars in the last few days of the month, when deals tend to peak, bought cars over the weekend instead, said Jesse Toprak, an analyst with car buying site TrueCar.com. As a result, TrueCar isn't changing its forecast for October U.S. auto sales. Toprak predicts that more than 1.1 million vehicles will be sold in October, up 11.5 percent from the same month last year. Forecasting firm LMC Automotive predicts that 1 percent to 3 percent of new-car sales, around 20,000 vehicles, will be lost because of the storm. But LMC analyst Jeff Schuster predicts that those sales will simply shift to November. So the storm might have little or no overall effect on sales. Toprak also notes that dealers could gain sales once the storm is over if people need to replace damaged vehicles. POWER Energy outages and disruptions in major East Coast cities "may take a toll on (power) demand unlike anything we have seen before," Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst for Price Futures Group, wrote in a report. Owners of the six biggest refineries in the Northeast shut down two and cut production at most of the others. That includes a full shutdown of the Phillips 66 refinery in Linden, N.J., the second-biggest in the Northeast at 285,000 barrels per day. The biggest refinery in the area, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, was nearly shut. Oil prices fell as it appeared the massive storm will reduce demand by keeping drivers off the road and shutting businesses. Once the storm passes, gas station managers have to work to make sure they have enough gasoline to sell. Those that operate under a major brand such as Mobil, Shell or BP and have supply agreements may be able to get only a portion of their allotment. They have to compete with non-branded gas station operators for the rest
-- and pay whatever the going rate is. "The challenge isn't when everyone is hunkered down and there are no cars on the road," says Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores. "The problem is how fast can you be replenished. You don't want to be the guy with the bagged pumps."
TELECOMS When disaster strikes, phone and Internet service often takes a hit, right when it's needed the most. Phone companies on the
Eastern Seaboard were topping up fuel for backup generators and lining up disaster recovery trailers to move into flooded areas after the storm passes. Verizon, the largest landline phone company on the East Coast, said the storm had not yet had any major effect, and its network was performing normally. Verizon said all its cell tower sites have at least eight hours of backup power. At AT&T, employees were adding portable generators to cell towers and checking on fuel levels. Even if cellphones work, wireless networks may be overloaded by people calling to check in on each other or surfing the Web. That's why cellphone companies recommend text messaging rather than calling in any disaster, because text messages use much less network capacity.
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