Glitch at New York Stock Exchange Throws Markets Into Chaos

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) said it was investigating a technical issue on Monday morning that caused roughly a dozen stocks, including Chipotle and GameStop, to experience volatility halts, according to Bloomberg. Berkshire Hathaway and the Bank of Montreal appeared to briefly trade at a 99% discount to their opening prices on Monday, seemingly related to the glitch.

“A technical issue with industry-wide price bands published by the CTA SIP triggered halts in a number of stocks listed on the NYSE Group exchanges this morning,” said the stock exchange on its status page at 11:08 am in New York. “Impacted stocks have since reopened (or are in the process of reopening) and the price bands issue has been resolved.”

Monday’s NYSE glitch comes just days after another major service in the American stock market went down. The S&P 500 Index would not update for an hour on Thursday of last week due to a technical disruption to its real-time capabilities. Glitches are somewhat rare for stock market institutions, but not unheard of. In January of 2023, an NYSE staffer left a backup “disaster recovery system” running in a Chicago data center overnight, which led to wild price swings for hundreds of stocks the next day.

As institutional players dealt with the glitches, Gamestop and other meme stocks soared on Monday morning. The meme bunch was fueled by a fresh 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 stock and options, leading to a 103% surge in premarket trading on Monday.

The cause of Monday’s glitch for the NYSE is unclear at this time. As of 11:40 am, the NYSE reported that “all impacted stocks have reopened” and “all systems are currently operational.”

The event is a reminder that stock markets are built on top of delicate algorithms that are not immune to technical glitches. However, these issues can cause brief periods of panic and fear when they happen.