Trading resumes at NY Stock Exchange after technical glitch
Problem said to have stemmed from software update; NYSE says three-hour shutdown did not affect other US stock exchanges
Trading resumed on the New York Stock Exchange after an outage of more than three hours caused by technical problems.
There was no interruption at the dozens of other US stock exchanges Wednesday, including the Nasdaq, so investors were still able to buy and sell stocks easily.
The NYSE didn’t say what the problem was but described it as internal issue and not the result of a breach of its systems.
The market was already lower as traders worried about China’s failure to halt a plunge in its shares and talks remained stuck between Greece and its lenders.
In the last hour of trading the Dow Jones industrial average was down 210 points, or 1.2 percent, at 17,569. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was off 25 points, or 1.2 percent, to 2,056.
After halting trade at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning, the NYSE was quick to deny rumors that the shutdown was caused by a cyber attack. The NYSE twitter feed said the outage was due to “an internal technical issue and is not the result of a cyber breach.”
In a subsequent notice, the NYSE said it had canceled all open orders.
Traders at the NYSE informed the New York Times that they were told the problem stemmed from a software update rolled out before Wednesday’s business day. A trader told the paper that the NYSE said the new software caused problems shortly after trading began, and the whole system was shut down to fix the problem.
Major stocks listed on the NYSE continued to trade on the Nasdaq and BATS, the third-largest US exchange.
The Nasdaq suffered the last major outage on a major US exchange, going down for three hours in August 2013 due to technical problems.
The outage also came on the same day as United Airlines grounded planes at US airports for an hour due to a computer glitch. The website for the Wall Street Journal newspaper was also suffering intermittent glitches.