Worst-Case Scenario for the Wall Street

Wall Street wants to be prepared for the worst-case scenario as the virus continues to spread around the world. Major banks and financial institutions are working hard to alleviate the economic impact caused by the virus outbreak.

As a reminder, several days ago, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading for 15 minutes after stocks fell by more than 7%.

The main question at the moment is how to operate the stock market if banks have to evacuate their offices to contain the virus.

There is no universal solution to this challenge. However, a number of world-famous companies already started to implement measures.

Banks started to test backup sites in case they can no longer access Wall Street or locations in central London.

It makes sense, as they want to make sure that no matter what will happen to Wall Street, they will continue to operate without serious restrictions.

Wall Street and Precautionary measures

The virus outbreak created a lot of problems for Wall Street.

JPMorgan Chase decided to divide its sales and trading teams between separate locations as a precautionary measure.

JPMorgan Chase wants to reduce the risk caused by the outbreak. Importantly, the famous company operates alternate sites in Brooklyn as well as New Jersey and Basingstoke, U.K.

Bank of America decided to split its fixed income and equities trading teams starting from Monday. Bank of America will send some of its employees to a backup site in Stamford, Connecticut.

Deutsche Bank divided some London operations and trading teams, and some employees are working from home.

Such decisions will help to avoid the worst-case scenario for Wall Street. For example, as a result of Hurricane Sandy, trading was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq only for two days. This example once more underlines the importance of disaster recovery sites.