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Stocks Fall After NYSE Glitch

Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson said he had spoken to United CEO Jeff Smisek.

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The exchange had hoped to reopen by 3pm, Mr Farley said.

The airline blamed its woes on a problem with a router. A less dramatic stumble put most of NASDAQ out of action for three hours in 2013.

Traders wait for trading to resume at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

“The agency will be interested in what the root cause is, whether it should have been anticipated, and how the issue is dealt with”, said James Burns, a partner at law firm Willkie, Farr and Gallagher who previously was the SEC’s deputy director of trading and markets.

Officials and the exchange have said that there is no indication that the problem is the result of a cyber-attack. Early Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all United Airlines flights across the globe for two hours because of an “automation issue”.

HIA says they don’t expect anymore issues for the rest of the day. For heavily traded securities the level is set at 5 percent, while for other stocks it is set at 10.

“It’s a glitch. It’s an inconvenience”, Tom Caldwell, chairman of Toronto-based Caldwell Securities, said of the NYSE shutdown, “But the slack is picked up right away”. “You have so many competing exchanges”. Concerns about China’s plunging stock market and a logjam in talks between Greece and its creditors weighed on the mood. Major indexes continued to move as stocks were traded on other exchanges. The tech-rich Nasdaq, 1.8% lower, or 87 points, ended at 4,909. Beijing ordered state-owned companies to buy shares and promised more credit to finance trading.

The exchange said the halt, which occurred shortly after 11.30am EDT, was not the result of a cyberattack. The Standard & Poor’s 500 got a final print. All is well for people with 401(k)s. The suspension of trading was longest at the exchange in recent memory.

The Nasdaq halted trades for three hours in August 2013 due to technical problems.

Nevertheless, some analysts say that the stock market is still at risk today.

“Only 15 to 20 percent of global stock exchange trading happens on the NYSE these days”, he said.

Problems with technology have at times roiled global financial markets, but the 223-year-old New York Stock Exchange has held itself up as an oasis of humans ready to step in when the computers go haywire.

The exchange made the statement in a tweet on its official Twitter account. In fact, some insiders have speculated that Wednesday’s problems may have been caused by too much traffic from high-speed trading, not too little.

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This past April, British trader Navinder Singh Sarao was arrested in connection with the incident, and the Department of Justice charged him with playing a key role in the crash by manipulating the market.

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York Wednesday