BREAKING NEWS:
Trading was halted for more than two hours on the New York Stock Exchange floor Wednesday after an internal technical issue was detected – amid other cyber glitches that officials are investigating but have not yet determined to be connected or part of any cyberattack.
Trading stopped around 11:30 a.m. ET though NYSE - listed shares continued to trade on other exchanges such as the Nasdaq.
The New York Stock Exchange, which is owned by Intercontinental Exchange, has experienced technical difficulties in the past.
Though the NYSE – the world’s largest stock exchange based on market capitalization - has experienced technical ticks in the past, Wednesday’s issue was out of the ordinary.
Shortly after the outage, which was unusual and symbolic, the NYSE tweeted that the issue was internal and not a breach.
"The issue we are experiencing is an internal technical issue and is not the result of a cyber breach," the exchange tweeted. "We chose to suspend trading on NYSE to avoid problems arising from our technical issue."
Still, the timing of the event coincided with other cyber glitches Wednesday including a computer issue that temporarily grounded all United Airlines flights as well as an outage on The Wall Street Journal’s homepage. In that case, the newspaper’s homepage displayed a 504 outage though other sections on the online paper’s website, continued to function.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson tried to allay fears, saying, “It appears from what we know at this stage that the malfunctions at United and at the stock exchange were not the result of any nefarious actor.”
He added, “We know less about the Wall Street Journal at this point except that their system is back up again as is the United Airline system.”
The White House confirmed to Fox News that President Obama had been briefed on the NYSE situation.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., the top Democrat on the cyber-security subcommittee, told Fox News that the NYSE incident has “the appearance” of a cyberattack and noted the coordination of multiple sites.
An FBI official told Fox News that the bureau has offered its assistance concerning the NYSE situation, but at this time it does not appear to be nefarious.
Fox News’ Chad Pergram and Matthew Dean contributed to this report.
Just my opinion, of course.
