Late NYSE Glitch Caps Year of Technological Glitches for Exchanges

   By Chris Dieterich 
 

NEW YORK--Rival exchanges briefly stopped sending orders to the New York Stock Exchange as the Big Board experienced trading problems with more than two dozen stocks Monday. The glitch, which was quickly resolved, came in the last hour of trading in a year that has been marked by technological glitches large and small.

NYSE said in an alert to traders at 3:19 p.m. EST that its equity market was experiencing an issue with one of its engines that matches "buy" and "sell" orders and that 26 issues were affected, including BBX Capital Corp. (BBX), Verso Paper Corp. (VRS) and TransAlta Corp. (TAC).

A subsequent alert sent at 3:23 p.m. EST said the issue was resolved. A spokesman for the NYSE, part of NYSE Euronext (NYX), couldn't immediately provide details of the trading problem.

BATS Global Markets and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ) each declared "self-help" against the NYSE. Exchanges can declare self-help when another market appears slow to respond to incoming orders or if the flow of information to and from the exchange is disrupted. Both exchanges began routing orders back to NYSE within 15 minutes.

The problem arose with less than an hour's worth of trading left in 2012, a year that has seen other notable technological problems.

Facebook Inc. (FB)'s troubled initial public offering in May left many investors initially wondering whether they owned stock. Bad software at Knight Capital Group Inc. (KCG) in August triggered errant stock orders that amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the firm.

Write to Chris Dieterich at [e-mail]

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