Selfies and ceremony as the Hong Kong stock exchange’s floor trading hall closes for good
About 1,400 traders join the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam to bid farewell to the hall and to mark the end of 126 years of floor trading history
Stock traders past and present, many wearing the traditional red jacket, joined government leaders at the trading hall of the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday for its official closing ceremony, bringing down the curtain on 126 years of floor trading in the city.
Once the centre of stock trading in the city, the floor fell victim to the rise of electronic trading in the 1990s and the brokers gradually moved out, prompting the bourse operator, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), to close it.
The current building, located at Exchange Square in Central, began operations in 1986 following the merger of the city’s four different stock exchanges. It will now become a museum, conference and exhibition space to promote Hong Kong’s financial markets and will be renamed Hong Kong Connect Hall, reopening in February 2018.
Its closure leaves only New York among major world stock exchanges to have a trading floor.
“When the trading hall first opened on April 2, 1986, the Hang Seng Index traded at 1,603, and it closed at 28,438 today. Turnover on its first trading day was HK$226 million and today it was about HK$100 billion,” said HKEX chairman Chow Chung-kong, in remarks at the ceremony.
“This shows the Hong Kong stock market has come a long way. There have been a lot of ups and downs, good and bad days in between, but traders have kept the market going over the three decades,” he said.