Sandy closes Wall Street for second day The Bureau of Labour Statistics said it would endeavour to proceed with the release of the critical US non-farm payrolls data due on Friday - the last of the major economic news before the US presidential election. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York postponed its planned purchases of Treasury debt scheduled for Tuesday. "Mother Nature has had her say as the month of October nears a close and that vote was to shut it down early," said David Ader, strategist at CRT Capital, based in Stamford Connecticut. With the looming election and employment report as the primary risks outside of the obvious Sandy impact, the market will take a timeout to wait out the storm, literally. Not since the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001 has the stock market been closed for more than two days. Adrian Miller at GMP Securities in New York City said: "With the inability of the East Coast to operate, the bond market is now grinding to a complete halt." We are using a skeleton crew approach. No trader has come to work today in our New York offices, but they are all working from home. It's quite disruptive but many operations still can be shifted to other locations, such as clearing. John Yiannacopoulos, spokesman for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said initial public offerings set for this week would likely be delayed. Clearly, any pricings slated for today or tomorrow will get pushed back a few days. Any IPOs slated to price this week are also likely to get pushed out a few days, possibly to next week. The US bond market closed early at midday on Monday, and the leading industry lobby group recommended that trading remain closed for Tuesday due to the severe weather. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said the bond trading closure would apply to trading of US dollar-denominated government securities, mortgage- and asset-backed securities, over-the-counter investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, municipal bonds and secondary money market trading in bankers" acceptances, commercial paper and Yankee and Euro certificates of deposit. Earlier on Monday, the US Treasury held its regular 13-, and 26-week bill auctions and brought forward the sale of four-week bills from Tuesday. Additional reporting by Robin Harding in Washington and Arash Massoudi in New York