NYSE knocked off line, halts trades
Exchange's CEO cites software glitch
By Steve Gelsi, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 11:00 AM ET June 8, 2001
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- The New York Stock Exchange's first technical shutdown in six years sent shock waves through Wall Street on Friday.
The problem surfaced shortly after 10 a.m. and trading was halted through 11:15 a.m. due to what the exchange's top executive called a software glitch.
The Dow was last down 36 to 11,053. The index continues to move from trades by Nasdaq components Intel (INTC: news, msgs, alerts) and Microsoft (MSFT: news, msgs, alerts) .
Some New York Stock Exchange stocks are also continuing to trade on electronic communication networks such as Island ECN.
More than a third of the components of the Dow Industrials ($INDU: news, msgs, alerts) were still untraded so far on Friday.
In an interview with CNBC, NYSE CEO Richard Grasso said a loss of connectivity by half the trading floor with the data center caused the shutdown.
"We've not had to do this for six years," he said.
He blamed new software introduced into the system on Thursday night for causing a loss of connectivity for half of the trading floor. He did not name the software product.
Institutional customers could continue to trade on the floor, but all electronic access to half the floor was knocked out.
Grasso said the NYSE decided to shut down the whole floor to be fair to retail customers who trade electronically.
"We are a technology campus and we have to innovate," Grasso said. "So this will force us to step back and why did this new piece of innovation fail to deliver against our reliability standard."
The exchange said it'll reboot the system with the old software and resume trading by 11:15 a.m.
Steve Gelsi is a reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com.