NYSE Resumes Trading After System Outtage
N E W Y O R K, June 8 -- It was a down day on Wall Street, but not just in the usual sense.
A software glitch that left traders able to buy and sell only about half the listed stocks on the New York Stock Exchange ultimately brought the exchange to a halt for more than an hour this morning. Additional bugs kept some stocks off the boards until mid-afternoon.
The closure slowed or shut down trading on other exchanges as well. But it wasn't only the the stumble in trading that left overall market performance weak. Poor earnings news from tech firm Juniper Networks also kept the indexes down.
When it was over, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 114 points, closing at 10,977. The Nasdaq was close 49 points lower at 2,215.
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The exchange opened normally at 9:30 a.m. ET, but the software glitch halted trades at 10:10 a.m. ET. Trading of most stocks resumed at 11:35 a.m., although some companies still were not trading until nearly 2:30 p.m. ET.
Exchange officials said the problems stemmed from software introduced into the NYSE trading system Thursday night. NYSE Chairman & CEO Richard Grasso declined to name the software company, saying the responsibility for the problem lay with the NYSE.
Overnight, a new release of a program was installed that acts as a bridge between orders sent to data processing sites and the trading floor. Grasso said the problem was noticed around 9:05, when it was apparent the display screens at the trading posts were not "opening" quickly.
About 10 minutes before the opening bell, it was decided to go back to the previous version of the software. That, the NYSE says, "should have been routine. It was not." At the opening bell, nine of the 20 trading posts were unable to process retail trades, or those from individuals.
After trying to resolve the problem for 40 minutes, Grasso decided to halt all trading in the interest of "fairness to all our customers." A reboot of the software didn't fully resolve the problem, with two posts trading about 10 percent of the 3,500 stocks.
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