 Opening its iconic floor, traders have been working remotely or online since March 23rd because of the coronavirus. So today the floor is going to be reopened, but there are going to be many safety precautions in place. Only a certain number of people are going to be on the floor. Let's bring in Melissa Armo to talk a little bit more about this. So, Melissa, who is permitted to get back on the trading floor today? Who's going to be there? Good morning. Well, it's really interesting because they're going to be at 25% capacity. Just like many of the businesses when they eventually reopen, restaurants included, when the city of New York eventually reopened, people are going to be at very low capacity. So it's interesting that they're doing this right now because the city is not open yet. They're requiring people also to wear masks on the floor. It's only going to be about 80 floor brokers on the floor. And again, they're also going to require them to take their temperature. So when they come in, they're going to have to have their temperature. They're going to have to have to have masks. There's no hands shaking allowed. It's going to be very different. They're also not allowed to eat on the floor. It's going to be a different environment. So, Melissa, according to the Wall Street Journal, there's been some tension between the company that operates the stock exchange and some of the companies that send employees to the floor over the terms of reopening. Can you explain what the difference is and why there's that reported tension? Exactly. Well, Morgan Stanley isn't sending any of their brokers. They're one of the companies that's not because they're having a problem with the intercontinental exchange that owns the New York Stock Exchange because they're requiring everyone if they come back to sign a liability waiver that says they understand that state could possibly get coronavirus, that there's risk to death. I mean, the waiver is very explicit. So some of the companies don't want their employees to go back yet. And that has really been what the controversy is about. But people are going to go back. Some of the smaller firms are going to go back. Employees are going to go back because they really need to start making money. And as you know, the PPP helped a lot of smaller businesses, but it was really the larger businesses have been able to hang on a lot better than smaller businesses, even small brokerage firms. A lot of these companies have been making less money. So here's the thing that I kind of don't understand. I mean, clearly the stock exchange has been tugging along throughout this whole thing. In fact, it's been doing quite well. 80%, I think, of trading is conducted online anyway. Why are people clamoring to get on the floor? What business is occurring on the floor that I'm not aware of because I'm not a stock exchange person that makes it so necessary to be there? I think it's more of a symbol that the country is getting back to normal, to be honest with you. I think it's a symbol and also on top of that, you do have better volume when you have the floor brokers there. IPOs, when you're running out an IPO, it's better to have the floor brokers there. So you do have better volume with the people there. Although the market was open, the market traded, it was in a very tight range for a lot of the weeks during the month of May. Now we're in the last final week of May. We had a nice opening here this morning. We're up a lot this morning. The S&P is over 3000. That's a critical number. I think you're going to see larger moves, bigger moves on the day in the market to get out of this range. We broke out of this range today because, again, the optimism, part of it is a lot of the states are starting to reopen. What's unusual is that this is happening in New York because New York City is not open yet, but I think a lot of it has to do with the symbolism of the country getting back to normal, although you will see improved volume. But you're right. 80% of the brokers are working from home, and that's going to continue because, as I said, some of the companies, they don't want to accept the liability for their employees, and they also care about the health of their employees, and they are concerned that people may get the virus. As you know, people are walking around, some are asymptomatic. Someone could test, not have a fever, and still have the virus. Melissa, you pointed out that some major indices are posting gains. We have the President of the United States. He just tweeted about it to this morning. Stock market up big. Dow crosses 25,000. The President likes to point to the stock market as a barometer of success in the economy. But people who know, people who work on the street like yourself, understand that the stock market is not necessarily the economy. There are still millions of Americans who are unemployed. When we talk about getting back to normal, it's not a switch that you just turn on, and we expect things to go back to the pre-pandemic levels. This is going to take some time, and even officials that are part of the President's economic team at the White House are saying that it will be some time into the third and fourth quarter before we start to see the economy recovery. Do you see it the same way? I think it's absolutely terrible that almost 40 million people have applied for unemployment. That is a shocking number. Another shocking number is that 100,000 some Americans have died from COVID-19. There's no good news in that whatsoever at all. And we're going to have another number come out again this Thursday with possibly being over the 40 million number of people applying for unemployment. The economy right now looks very different to me than the stock market. You say, well, how does that make any sense? When we have so many people out of work, how is the market rallying? Now, me personally, for the last two months, I was really looking at the market thinking, we're going to go down and retest those March lows. In fact, I think we talked about it the last time that I was on with you. I really thought that that was a huge possibility. That still can happen. Is it going to happen because of COVID-19 now? I don't think so. I think one of the biggest risks to the market right now is the China-U.S. trade tensions that are going to come to the forefront at some point between now and the end of 2020. I don't know if they're going to come to the forefront before the presidential election, but I believe that the trade tensions are going to affect the market in a negative way just like they did in 2018. Again, this all stems from where the virus originated in China and the relationship between China and the rest of the world about what's happened. But getting back to your point about the economy, there's a lot of people out of work, but people are investing their money in the stock market and stocks after a dip down because where can you put your money right now to earn anything? A lot of wealthy people, a lot of wealthy investors, people want to put their money in the market to make it work for them because interest rates are so, so low. In fact, they continue to keep dropping. When someone says, listen, I want to earn money on my money, where can I put it? They're putting it in the market, but not every stock is going to rally. Not every stock is going to recover. Not every business is going to recover from this economic downturn too. I will tell you, I do not envy the government leaders right now, anyone. Locally, state leaders, or even the president, when you're trying to make choices about people's health and the economy, but there's just way too many people out of work, the country does need to reopen. And when I walk outside my door and look at New York City, man, it is hard not to get depressed. I mean, you see people walking around in masks and all these businesses are closed, and I don't care what anyone says in the administration, not all these jobs are going to come back. There's no way. In fact, in New York City, many of these places will not reopen. You have a nail salon almost in every corner in New York. They have to do 100 manicures a day. They're already under. They're gone. We're going into our third month. And the problem is when they rolled this out with all of the rules and the guidelines of the different phases, it was to me as a person watching it, when I watched it live, it was very convoluted. It was very confusing. It really wasn't clear to people watching it. And even here in New York, we're looking for guidance from the mayor. We're looking for guidance from the governors. We have no idea when we're going to reopen here. Give us a date. Give us something. Give us anything. We're not getting that. Very important context there. Melissa, as always, we appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks for having me.