It was business as usual on Wall Street as the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and other equity exchanges resumed trading after super storm Sandy shut operations for two days.<br/> <br />Stocks drifted lower after a positive start but finished close to the where they started in a light volume day.<br/> <br />For the month, the Dow shed 2-1/2 percent, while the Nasdaq was off 4-1/2 percent.<br/> <br />A power outage hit Knight Capital Group, forcing the brokerage to send customers away for the second time in three months.<br/> <br />But the exchanges as a whole seemed to take the re-opening in stride. The money lost in the past two days will not be made up says, Richard Repetto of Sandler O'Neill.<br/> <br />SOUNDBITE: RICHARD REPETTO, PRINCIPAL, SANDLER O'NEILL (ENGLISH) SAYING:<br/> <br />"So we found that for each exchange, both the NYSE and for NASDAQ, here was just a little over a million dollars, $1.1, $1.2 million. So it wasn't a lot of money. Now this is including options as well, equity and options trading. And it was probably about half a cent in EPS."<br/> <br />Looking at the market reaction: shares of NYSE Euronext were down slightly but Nasdaq OMX and Knight Capital were slightly higher.<br/> <br />Some investors may have decided to count the cost of damage to their property after Sandy swept through the East Coast, adding to the light volume session.<br/> <br />Tom Larsen of Eqecat says total economic damages could top his initial $20 billion estimate.<br/> <br />SOUNDBITE: TOM LARSEN, VP, EQECAT (ENGLISH) SAYING:<br/> <br />"It's certainly one of the strongest in the last few years, what we've seen. Hurricane Ike in 2008 was about $12 billion in insured losses. Hurricane Irene from last year was in the order of $6 billion, so these are a lot more severe and certainly the damage is far more widespread, infecting almost 50 million people were affected by this event."<br/> <br />A quick look at company specific news....<br/> <br />Shares of Netflix surged about 14 percent after billionaire investor Carl Icahn revealed a nearly 10-percent stake in the video rental and download company.<br/> <br />And strong U.S. sales helped General Motors post much higher-than-expected quarterly results.<br/> <br />Finally, European shares were down without much to give them a lift.
