NEW YORK-Stock trad­ing will be closed in the US for a sec­ond day to­day as Hur­ri­cane Sandy bears down on the East Coast. Bond trad­ing will al­so be closed.

The last time the New York Stock Ex­change was closed for weath­er was in 1985 be­cause of Hur­ri­cane Glo­ria, and it will be the first time since 1888 that the ex­change will have been closed for two con­sec­u­tive days be­cause of weath­er. The cause then was a bliz­zard that left drifts as high as 40 feet (12 me­ters) in the streets of New York City.

The New York Stock Ex­change and Nas­daq said they in­tend to re­open on Wednes­day and would keep in­vestors up­dat­ed. Much of the East Coast was at a stand­still yes­ter­day as the storm ap­proached. Mass tran­sit and schools were closed across the re­gion ahead of the storm hit­ting land, which was ex­pect­ed to hap­pen lat­er Mon­day.

Ar­eas around New York's Fi­nan­cial Dis­trict were part of a manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion zone. The storm surge is al­ready push­ing wa­ter over sea­walls in the south­ern tip of Man­hat­tan.

AP