NYSE Halts Trading After Technical Error

NEW YORK -- The New York Stock Exchange halted all trading Wednesday after an apparent computer malfunction.

The technical glitch followed a hiccup earlier on Wednesday, when the NYSE issued an alert about "a reported issue with a gateway connection," which affected trading of certain stocks.

"We're currently experiencing a technical issue that we're working to resolve as quickly as possible," Marissa Arnold, an NYSE spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement. "We will be providing further updates as soon as we can, and are doing our utmost to produce a swift resolution, communicate thoroughly and transparently, and ensure a timely and orderly market re-open."

During a 2 p.m. appearance on CNBC, NYSE President Tom Farley said he expected the stock exchange to reopen by about 3 p.m. Stocks began trading again at 3:10 p.m.

"The decision was made to suspend trading as we worked to identify the cause and resolve it," the NYSE said in a statement after market close. "The root cause was determined to be a configuration issue."

There was "no indication" that the NYSE glitch is related to a cyberattack, a Department of Homeland Security official told HuffPost. However, the cause of the glitch was not immediately determined.

The NYSE also denied that it had been the victim of a cyber attack.

The Nasdaq said its operations were unaffected.

The outage came amid a flurry of other technical issues across the business world on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, United Airlines temporarily grounded all planes worldwide over a "network connectivity issue." About 4,900 flights were affected.

By noon, The Wall Street Journal's homepage had crashed. A 504 error message displayed when visitors attempted to reach WSJ.com.

Jennifer Bendery contributed reporting from Washington.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story indicated that the entire Wall Street Journal website had crashed. Only the homepage appeared to be down.