NEW YORK-The New York Stock Ex­change will close its trad­ing floor to­day as Hur­ri­cane Sandy bar­rels its way up the North­east, but trad­ing will con­tin­ue elec­tron­i­cal­ly. The NYSE says it will in­voke its con­tin­gency plans be­gin­ning to­day. The New York Mer­can­tile Ex­change al­so will be shut­ting its trad­ing floor which is lo­cat­ed in a manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion zone.

Trad­ing has rarely stopped for weath­er. The NYSE shut down on March 27, 1985 for Hur­ri­cane Glo­ria. Hur­ri­cane Sandy was head­ed north from the Caribbean, on course to meet a snow­storm and a cold front. Ex­perts said the rare hy­brid storm could cause hav­oc over 800 miles (1,300 kilo­me­ters) stretch­ing from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.

CME Group Inc said it was sus­pend­ing floor trade to­day at NYMEX World Head­quar­ters, the biggest oil and en­er­gy fu­tures and op­tions mar­ket in the world. But elec­tron­ic trade at all of CME will open at the reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled time at Globex and Clear­Port, CME's on­line elec­tron­ic plat­forms.

Ma­jor Wall Street banks in­clud­ing Gold­man Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), Cit­i­group Inc and JP­Mor­gan Chase & Co (JPM.N) were al­so prepar­ing to open for busi­ness on Mon­day. "The word go­ing around the floor on Fri­day was peo­ple should ex­pect this to hap­pen. In the event the ex­change does not open, they will trade elec­tron­i­cal­ly though," Ken Pol­cari, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor for ICAP Eq­ui­ties, said yes­ter­day.

"If that hap­pened, it's prob­a­bly go­ing to be very mut­ed vol­ume," he said. One bond trad­er at a large Wall Street firm said the New York-based banks would route or­ders through their Mid­west and West Coast of­fices. He said West Coast em­ploy­ees were plan­ning to get up ear­ly, while col­leagues in Eu­rope were ex­pect­ing a long day on Mon­day.

Vol­umes were, how­ev­er, ex­pect­ed to be low­er and or­ders may be hard­er to fill, the trad­er added. The Se­cu­ri­ties In­dus­try and Fi­nan­cial Mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion said it has not made any rec­om­men­da­tions to close the fixed-in­come mar­ket on Mon­day.

Hur­ri­cane Sandy is ex­pect­ed to slam in­to the East Coast tonight, bring­ing tor­ren­tial rains, high winds, se­vere flood­ing and pow­er out­ages. The rare "su­per storm", cre­at­ed by an Arc­tic jet stream wrap­ping it­self around a trop­i­cal storm, could be the biggest to hit the US main­land, fore­cast­ers said.

The scram­ble on Wall Street start­ed ear­ly, as New York Gov­er­nor An­drew Cuo­mo an­nounced the sub­way, bus and rail sys­tem in the city would close at 7 pm on Sun­day. About 8.5 mil­lion com­muters use the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Au­thor­i­ty, mean­ing most Wall Street em­ploy­ees would be un­able to get to work as usu­al.

New York City May­or Michael Bloomberg al­so closed pub­lic schools and or­dered an evac­u­a­tion of 375,000 peo­ple in coastal ar­eas. In Au­gust 2011, of­fi­cials feared Hur­ri­cane Irene would flood low­er Man­hat­tan and crip­ple busi­ness in the world's fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal, but the flood­ing was mi­nor and there were no ma­jor dis­rup­tions at the ex­changes.

Gold­man, whose of­fice in down­town Man­hat­tan is in one of the ar­eas to be evac­u­at­ed, told em­ploy­ees that it would open for busi­ness, with some staff work­ing from of­fices in Green­wich, Con­necti­cut and in Prince­ton, New Jer­sey. Oth­ers will work from home. It al­so plans to use teams in Lon­don and oth­er lo­ca­tions around the world for ad­di­tion­al sup­port.

Cit­i­group, which has three lo­ca­tions in the New York evac­u­a­tion zone, said there would be no ac­cess to those build­ings, and "non-crit­i­cal per­son­nel should in­voke their work-from-home strate­gies". JP­Mor­gan said it would be open, but the bank was fo­cused on en­sur­ing its em­ploy­ees' safe­ty.

The NYSE has not suf­fered a weath­er-re­lat­ed late open­ing since 1996, hav­ing opened on time in ex­treme cir­cum­stances in the past, in­clud­ing Hur­ri­cane Irene last year. It last sus­pend­ed phys­i­cal trad­ing floor op­er­a­tions on Sep­tem­ber 27, 1985 due to Hur­ri­cane Glo­ria, dur­ing which all mar­kets were closed.

The Big Board is lo­cat­ed in Zone C, an area con­sid­ered low in terms of its like­li­hood of an evac­u­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to the New York Of­fice of Emer­gency Man­age­ment. The NYSE has arranged ac­com­mo­da­tions for es­sen­tial staff near its low­er-Man­hat­tan head­quar­ters, while oth­er em­ploy­ees have been en­cour­aged to work from home or al­ter­nate lo­ca­tions, said a per­son fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion.

"Every­body on Wall Street has ho­tels booked for es­sen­tial per­son­nel," this per­son said, adding that the stock ex­change would need sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple, com­pared to its usu­al 1,000, on the floor to keep trad­ing go­ing.

The ma­jor ex­changes and most big trad­ing firms have al­ter­nate trad­ing fa­cil­i­ties if down­town Man­hat­tan is in­ac­ces­si­ble, but the storm's wide path may af­fect a num­ber of sites in the New York met­ro­pol­i­tan area. Au­thor­i­ties have warned of pos­si­ble wide­spread pow­er out­ages that could last for days.