Of course, much of the recent choppiness in financial markets is tied to fears about the economic fallout of the pandemic, as people around the country shelter in place. But the sudden scattering of many of Wall Street’s traders from their hubs in Lower and Midtown Manhattan and toward a honeycomb of home offices and emergency backup locations introduced an element of discombobulation that few firms had prepared for. Traders around the country faced similar challenges.

Mehmet Kinak, the global head of systematic trading at T. Rowe Price, an asset management company, used to sit with a group of about a dozen traders on the seventh floor of his company’s headquarters in Baltimore. Past the sea of screens — traders typically had three or four at their desks — were views of the National Aquarium and Camden Yards, the home of the Orioles.

Now, Mr. Kinak logs in from his home office — a small room in the basement of his Elk Ridge, Md., residence. Instead of engaging in constant chatter, his group connects via live chat tools such as Webex and Symphony. He’s noticed a slight slowdown in the pace of trading with partners on Wall Street as well, which he attributes to a combination of wild swings in markets and the transition to working from home.

“It just takes a little bit more time,” said Mr. Kinak. “But incrementally, it adds up.”

The global financial system is intricate and highly complex, made up of thousands of companies — banks, hedge funds, asset managers, trading specialists — that buy and sell trillions of dollars in assets like stocks, bonds and currencies for themselves or their clients. To do so, companies invest heavily in technology and have elaborate setups meant to simplify communication between trading desks, analysts and clients. Milliseconds make a difference in this environment, because prices can change swiftly.

Some of this activity is deemed so important that President Trump last month declared banking employees “essential” to the functioning of the U.S. economy and exempted them from orders to stay at home or stop working. Some Wall Street employees are still going into the office — especially those on trading floors where activity is both highly regulated and customized, and difficult to replicate at home.