Donald Trump to ring New York Stock Exchange bell for first time

US President-elect Donald Trump is expected to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday as he is also named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

It will be a notable moment of recognition for Mr Trump, a born-and-bred New Yorker who gave up living full time in his namesake Trump Tower in Manhattan and moved to Florida.

The US stock market soared after Mr Trump won the 2024 election in part by seizing on Americans’ worries over the economy.

The ringing of the bell is a powerful symbol of US capitalism. Despite his decades as a New York businessman, Mr Trump has never done it before.

Mr Trump was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2016, when he was first elected to the White House.

He had already been listed as a finalist for this year’s award alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, X owner Elon Musk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kate, the Princess of Wales.

Time declined to confirm the selection ahead of Thursday morning’s announcement.

“Time does not comment on its annual choice for Person of the Year prior to publication,” a spokesperson for the magazine said on Wednesday.

The people who confirmed the bell-ringing were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. It was not clear whether Mr Trump, a Republican, would meet New York’s embattled mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, who has warmed to Mr Trump and has not ruled out changing his political party.

The stock exchange regularly invites celebrities and business leaders to participate in the ceremonial opening and closing of trading. During Mr Trump’s first presidential term, his wife, Melania Trump, rang the bell to promote her “Be Best” initiative to promote children’s wellbeing.

After the November 5 election, the S&P 500 rallied 2.5% for its best day in nearly two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 1,508 points, or 3.6%, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 3%. All three indexes topped records they had set in recent weeks.

Mr Trump has long courted the business community based on his own status as a wealthy property developer who gained additional fame as the star of the TV show The Apprentice.

The larger business community has applauded his promises to hold down corporate taxes and cut regulations. But there are also concerns about his stated plans to impose broad tariffs and possibly target companies that he sees as not aligning with his own political interests.

The Republican spends the bulk of his time at his Florida home, but was in New York for weeks this spring during his hush money trial there.

He was convicted, but his lawyers are pushing for the case to be thrown out in light of his election.

While he spent hours in a Manhattan courthouse every day during his criminal trial, Mr Trump took his presidential campaign to the streets of the heavily Democratic city.

Mr Trump returned to the city in September to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at his Manhattan tower.

The US stock market has historically tended to rise regardless of which party wins the White House, with Democrats scoring bigger average gains since 1945. But Republican control could mean big shifts in the winning and losing industries underneath the surface, and investors are adding to bets built earlier on what the higher tariffs, lower tax rates and lighter regulation that Mr Trump favours will mean.

The ringing of the bell has been a tradition since the 1800s. The first guest to do it was a 10-year-old boy named Leonard Ross, in 1956, who won a quiz show answering questions about the stock market.

Many times, companies listing on the exchange would ring the bell at 9.30am to commemorate their initial offerings as trading began. But the appearances have become an important marker of culture and politics – something Mr Trump hopes to seize as he has promised historic levels of economic growth.

The anti-apartheid advocate and South African president Nelson Mandela rang the bell, as has Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone with his castmates from the film The Expendables. So too have the actors Robert Downey Jr and Jeremy Renner for an Avengers movie and Olympians Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan became the first sitting US president to ring the bell.