Stock exchanges reopened Wednesday morning as the market looked to put the trauma of Hurricane Sandy behind and get back to business.
CNBC
The New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq, and other exchanges opened for business after Sandy's wrath plunged the financial district and much of New York into chaos. (Read More: See CNBC's Complete Coverage of the Superstorm)
Indexes opened mostly higher as pent-up trades were unleashed on Wall Street and portfolio managers moved to do some last-minute window-dressing before the end of the month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor's 500 were positive, though the Nasdaq tech barometer moved narrowly lower. (Read More: Stocks Open Higher After Two-Day Shutdown)
"We got most of the stocks open already, so it's been very smooth," Duncan Niederauer, CEO at NYSE/Euronext, told CNBC just after the market open. "The market-making community is more than staffed enough to open. Nice to see the market up...So far, so good."
Transport into and around New York City remained limited on Wednesday, while wide-scale power outages meant many would be unable to work from home.
Some analysts said an overreaction and higher-than-normal volume was possible as pent-up demand is realized during early trading Wednesday following the closures, which came during the busy corporate earnings season and at the end of the fiscal year for some funds. (Read More: For Years, Warnings That It Could Happen in New York)
Chris Bertelsen, chief investment officer at Global Financial Private Capital in Sarasota, Fla., said the day would be marked by "the compression effect," marked by above-average volume as "one day of trading basically represents three."
"However, that's volume to the upside since we've had some positive underpinnings with strong earnings from Ford and BP and good news out of Europe," he said. "If we had been open over the past two days that would've been reflected in the market, but since we were dark, all that is going to come out today."
Niederauer said the NYSE had no choice but to close Monday and Tuesday, after Sandy left a brutal imprint across the metropolitan areas, shutting down mass transit and interrupting power to millions across the tri-state area.
"We jokingly said this morning we may be the only building south of Midtown that has water, lights and food," he said.
If he would concede one mistake, Niederauer said the industry should have decided sooner to close Monday.
