The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) said it was investigating a technical issue Monday morning that caused about a dozen stocks, including Chipotle and GameStop, to experience volatility outages, according to Bloomberg. Berkshire Hathaway and Bank of Montreal appeared to briefly trade at a 99% discount to their opening prices on Monday, apparently related to the issue.
"A technical issue with the industry-wide price bands published by CTA SIP led to halts in several stocks listed on NYSE Group exchanges this morning," the stock exchange said in its status page at 11:08 am in New York. "The affected stocks have since reopened (or are in the process of reopening) and the price banding issue has been resolved."
Monday's technical problem on the New York Stock Exchange comes just days after another major service fell on the US stock market. The S&P 500 index would not update for an hour on Thursday last week due to a technical disruption in its real-time capabilities. Failures are somewhat rare in stock market institutions, but not unheard of. In January 2023, a New York Stock Exchange employee left a backup of โdisaster recovery systemโ running in a Chicago data center overnight, causing wild price swings in hundreds of stocks the next day.
While institutional actors grappled with the glitches, Gamestop and others meme stocks soared Monday morning. The meme group was boosted by a new signal from the leader of the 2021 meme stock mania, Roaring Kitty. Keith Gil shared a screenshot suggesting he has a huge portfolio of GameStop stocks and options, sparking a 103% surge in pre-market trading on Monday.
The cause of Monday's problem on the NYSE is unclear at this time. At 11:40 a.m., the NYSE reported that "all affected stocks have reopened" and "all systems are currently operational."
The event is a reminder that stock markets are built on delicate algorithms that are not immune to technical glitches. However, these problems can cause brief periods of panic and fear when they occur.
