The New York Stock Exchange shut down its main market because of a computer malfunction, forcing traders to steer orders elsewhere in the biggest disruption to an American equity venue in almost two years.
The suspension, announced to securities firms through notices on the NYSE website around 11:32 a.m., dropped the largest U.S. share platform out of the network of trading platforms that make up the American equity market. That network kept running, however, as other exchanges such as the Nasdaq Stock Market and Bats Global Markets Inc. picked up the runoff.
It's good that the NASDAQ basically acted as a giant backup stock exchange for a while while the NYSE gets their crap sorted out, but increasingly in the world of high-speed, high-volume computerized trading, glitches like this will only keep getting more damaging to the economy.
“I don’t think it’s a hacking incident here or anything like that,” Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Chatham, New Jersey-based Themis Trading LLC, said by phone. “Based on what I’ve seen in the past, these type of things are usually some sort of issues related to an upgrade, maybe to handle the excessive traffic that’s constantly coming in with high-speed trading.”
The stock exchange operator said in a Twitter message the issue is internal and not a “cyber breach.” The Securities and Exchange Commission is closely monitoring the situation, according to an e-mailed statement from Chair Mary Jo White.
You don't suppose it has anything to do with China melting down amidst the Greek debt crisis, right?
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