NYSE Trading Halt: The Full Story

The New York Stock Exchange halted trade for 3.5 hours on Wednesday morning, citing technical problems as the cause for the unexpected shut down. Although the market resumed trading before the closing bell, it raised several concerns regarding the robustness of the system.

NYSE President Tom Farley was on CNBC recently to explain what exactly happened that led to the halt and why it took so long for the exchange to resume trading.

Unfolding Of Events

"We opened very well...but shortly thereafter we started seeing some anomalies, customers were not receiving all the messages they usually receive," Farley began. "And, part of taking our roles so seriously is, we need to have markets that are 100 percent at all times.

"And so, I stepped in; I made the decision working with regulations and our counsel's office to suspend trading at the New York Stock Exchange— It was a bit of a Hippocratic oath of do no harm."

Related Link: The Day The NYSE Stopped Working

Getting It Right

Farley was asked why it took almost four hours for the NYSE to resume trading. He replied, "Again, it comes back to what I was saying. The most important thing is to get it right. And so I was, as you can imagine, putting pressure on the team to identify the root and put in place plans, but not just a single plan – contingency plans – to bring it back up. But to make a 100 percent certain that when we did so, it'd be in a robust way."