Technical glitch causes chaos at close for NYSE

NYSE Arca was closed during final minutes on Monday after system error damaged closing prices.

A technical glitch on the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) ETF trading venue late Monday saw the majority of trades not close via the closing auction.

NSYE Arca was closed early and all live orders were cancelled as the exchange announced trading would not resume until 4.00am ET on 21 March.

Of the 1,230 listed securities on the venue, just 53 were able to close through the closing auction.

Typically, trading reverts to NYSE Arca in the remaining minutes of the day for the closing auction to determine settlement prices. Thousands of ETFs are expected to be affected by the glitch.

The exchange operator said it invoked its ‘procedures for determining the official closing price’ after the glitch, which is used when NYSE is unable to conduct a closing transaction in one or more listed securities due to a systems or technical issue.

“The NYSE Arca equities trading platform experienced a system issue resulting in a subset of symbols failing to conduct a closing auction or transition from the regular trading session to the late trading session at 4.00 pm,” NYSE said via a notification on its website.

NYSE said late yesterday the “underlying cause of the disruption has been identified and remediated.”

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