More than a bridge. While a privileged few vacationers who left on Friday are still around to enjoy it, millions of Italians have never left home. We work on Monday. And also on Tuesday, in some cases, in spite of the saints. Among these holiday workaholics there is also a particular category, that of stock market traders: tomorrow, November XNUMXst, Piazza Affari will remain open. Heroically, given the not exactly rosy period. Yet it wasn't always like this. Until a few years ago traders enjoyed many more holidays and even among them the idea of going to work on All Saints' Day was considered a sacrilege.
Then things changed with the development of markets and technologies. Since the end of the XNUMXs, the major European stock exchanges (joined in the Federation of European securities exchanges) have taken the path of integration and coordination, to try to make investor transactions increasingly easier. One of several agreements is the one that led to the elaboration of a agreed timetable: inevitably many traditional celebrations have been sacrificed.
Without prejudice to some milestones of the Western calendar, Christmas in primis, practically all local holidays have had to succumb, accompanied in oblivion by those that do not enjoy sufficient pan-European following, such as the Epiphany. In short, the Stock Exchange is no longer what it used to be: today we work more. The only consolation for traders is that in these bridge days they will be able to spare themselves the after-hour market, which is closed as always when trading volumes are particularly low (for example in the two weeks between August XNUMXth) and traders have better things to do rather than lingering at work.
The fundamental purpose of this new efficiency is to respond to the original vocation of any Stock Exchange: to allow those holding a financial instrument to trade with the greatest possible continuity. This is the mission of the Stock Exchanges. On the other hand, one could also find a practical, almost customary reason. Today life on the stock exchange is very different from that of the previous generation: there is no more shouting, think of (almost) all the computer (the Italian Stock Exchange was fully computerized in 1994). It is therefore natural that stress, at least the physical one, is lower. And with the disappearance of the human factor, it was quite inevitable that the holidays would also disappear.
In any case, to live days like today, in which all the European price lists collapse and Milan finds itself in the black jersey, one thinks that perhaps it would not have hurt to close its doors for 24 hours. Perhaps, in certain periods, it would still be appropriate to sanctify the holidays.
