U.S. equity markets will not open until Monday.

Richard Grasso, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange said that considering all the issues, the markets and regulators have concluded that the right thing to do for America is to resume trading at 09:30 ET Monday morning.

In a joint press conference by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the NYSE and Nasdaq, Grasso said that he and Wick Simmons, Nasdaq’s CEO, have talked to all of the major firms to get a sense of the investment community’s feeling and to take into account serious issues relating to the victim recovery efforts. “No desire to resume trading will take precedence over the desire to find every human trapped in that wreckage,” said Grasso.

Over the next few days, Grasso noted that the NYSE and Nasdaq will do necessary stress testing, looking at their power, connectivity and communications capabilities.

Simmons said there will be a test of all the markets on Saturday to ensure that Monday’s open works OK. There could be a different decision if those tests somehow fail or uncover serious problems, but every indication they have is that trading will resume on Monday

Grasso emphasized that the decision was reached in partnership between the NYSE and Nasdaq. Harvey Pitt, chairman of the SEC, stressed that from the perspective of the commission these decisions are market decisions not government decisions. It was reported that the government wanted trading to resume as soon as possible to send a message to the world that the United States will not be deterred by terrorists.