(Bloomberg) — Hong Kong is expected to shut its $4.9 trillion stock market on Friday morning as the city extends a storm warning due to Super Typhoon Yagi, which skirted the city overnight as it headed for southern China.
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A pre-opening session has been canceled and morning trading delayed, the exchange said in a filing. The city’s weather bureau issued its third-highest warning alert on Thursday evening, and reiterated early Friday that the Typhoon Signal 8 was expected to remain in force until at least noon.
Under the stock exchange’s current rules, the morning session will be canceled if the alert remains in place at 9 a.m., with afternoon trading also suspended if the warning isn’t lowered by 12 p.m. This will likely be the last time a typhoon forces a closure, with the financial hub ending its decades-long practice of shutting markets during typhoons from Sept. 23.
The signal 8 alert is a warning for gale or storm force winds. Train operator MTR Corp. said rail services will operate at limited frequencies, while the government had already announced the suspension of school classes on Friday.
Yagi is now about 390 kilometers south-southwest of Hong Kong and heading toward Hainan Island. The storm has maximum sustained winds of 130 knots (241 kilometers) per hour, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The system is equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane, which is considered a major storm that has the capacity to inflict catastrophic damage.
(Updates with new details throughout.)
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