A trader impatiently waits for trading to resume on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after technical issues bring the exchange to a halt Wednesday afternoon.
Computer glitches interrupted service at The New York Stock Exchange, United Airlines and The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
The three technical issues don’t seem to be connected, and representatives from from all three were quick to point to hardware issues as the cause of the interruption and quell rumors of cyber attacks. The interruptions came after worrying declines on China's stock exchanges overnight.
The exchange’s outage lasted about three hours, re-opening shortly after 3 p.m. Other stock exchanges, such as Nasdaq, continued trading throughout the day. Generally, the NYSE handles about 20 percent of US stock trading. According to the Wall Street Journal, the exchange told floor traders that the problem came from a software update installed Tuesday night.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama was briefed on the NYSE halt and United computer glitch but there was no indication of any terrorist activity or that a cyber attack caused the outage.
During the suspension, NYSE sent a note to investors informing them that all open orders, except for in specialized cases, had been cancelled.
Earlier in the day, United was also hit with hardware issues, which prompted the airline to ground all of its flights, world-wide
“We experienced a network connectivity issue this morning,” the company tweeted. “We are working to resolve this and apologize to our customers for any inconvenience.”
Eventually, more than 800 flights were delayed and about 60 were cancelled, according to United. They company is waiving change fees and fare differences for passengers who want to change their flights from Thursday to later in the week. Flights changed from Wednesday but not rescheduled for Thursday or Friday won't be subject to a change fee, but may have to pay a fare difference.
Also this morning, the Wall Street Journal’s homepage temporarily displayed a 504 outage message. Other sections — such as its Marketwatch section — remained online the entire day. The news organization's website was back up later that day.