zz/NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx/AP
The New York Stock Exchange said Monday’s technical issues were related to mechanisms meant to prevent sudden fluctuations in stock prices.
new york
CNN
—
The New York Stock Exchange said Monday it had resolved the technical issues that halted trading in some of its major stocks and caused Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s shares to fall 99.97%.
In an update, the NYSE said trading in the affected stocks had resumed and “all systems are currently operational.”
Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the NYSE, has found no evidence that the outage was caused by a cyberattack, a senior executive at a major bank who has been in contact with ICE told CNN.
Instead, a NYSE spokesman said there was a “technical issue” with an industry-wide price band that “triggered” trading halts in up to 40 stocks listed on NYSE Group exchanges.
The NYSE noted that these price bands are published by the Consolidated Tape Association’s (CTA) Security Information Processor (SIP), an industry group responsible for publishing real-time trading and quote data.
The CTA said Problem has occurred This “may be related to a new software release,” the trade group said, adding that it had turned to a secondary data center running an older version of the software to resolve the issue.
Dozens of stocks were halted from trading, indicating they were trading outside so-called upper and lower limit bands. NYSE websiteThe list also includes Chipotle and Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company run by legendary investor Warren Buffett.
For roughly two hours, Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares traded for just $185.10, a loss of 99.97%. Berkshire closed Friday at $627,400.
The New York Stock Exchange announced that it had decided to “set aside,” or cancel, all of Berkshire’s “erroneous” trades below $603,718.30 between 9:50 a.m. and 9:51 a.m. ET. The exchange said the decision cannot be appealed and indicated it may cancel other trades as well.
“We are monitoring this issue and are consulting with market participants,” a Securities and Exchange Commission spokesperson told CNN.
Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading, told CNN that the NYSE’s explanation was hard to square with the strange trading that was on record.
“I don’t believe that explanation. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Saluzzi, a market structure expert and author of “Broken Markets.”
Berkshire Hathaway shares were trading at $620,700 as of 9:44:32 a.m. on Monday, according to trading data provided by Refinitiv. Then, without any explanation, the shares crashed to just $185.10.
“All of a sudden, we were getting $185 prints, but there was no price reduction at each level, like you’d expect,” Saluzzi said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
The technical issues did not appear to affect the stock market as a whole. Mostly down on economic growth concerns.
Outside of Berkshire, most of the stocks and exchange-traded funds that were halted only saw small gains or losses.
However, Barrick GoldMoneyShares of the Canadian gold and copper producer were trading at just 25 cents, down 98.5% on the day, according to Refinitiv. By midday, Barrick’s shares had returned to normal levels, trading at $17.28, up 1.1% on the day.
New Scale Power (SmareShares of NuScale, a publicly traded maker of modular nuclear reactor technology, traded at 13 cents, down 98.5% on the day. After NuScale resumed trading, shares traded at $8.29, down just 5%.
This story has been updated with additional developments and background information.
