(1 of 2) We’re experiencing a technical issue that we’re working to resolve as quickly as possible.
— NYSE (@NYSE) July 8, 2015
I wonder if they’ve tried rebooting it?
From CNN:
The New York Stock Exchange suspended trading at 11:32 a.m ET Wednesday. It’s been down for over an hour. In a brief announcement, the exchange said it was experiencing a “internal technical issue.” The NYSE said later in a tweet that it’s “not the result of a cyber breach.”
“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,” the NYSE said.
The Department of Homeland Security told CNN that there is “no sign of malicious activity” at the NYSE or with an earlier outage experienced by United Airlines. The FBI says it reached out to NYSE and “no further law enforcement action is needed at this time.”
Other exchanges, including the Nasdaq, are still operating. That means investors can still trade, just not on the NYSE.
“It is the most significant outage since Nasdaq’s blackout [in 2013],” says Eric Scott Hunsader, a market structure expert and CEO of Nanex, a data feed company. The 2013 “Flash Freeze” caused all Nasdaq-listed shares to stop trading for more than three hours.
Other glitches: The Wall Street Journal’s homepage stopped functioning around the same time that the NYSE went down. The Journal was able to restore a limited homepage by 12:18 pm ET with the message “WSJ.com is having technical difficulties. The full site will return shortly.”
United Airlines’ computer system malfunctioned Wednesday morning, but it was back up by the time NYSE had problems.
Meanwhile, there’s a full-scale market meltdown in China. But we shouldn’t freak out or anything. Interesting times.
Open thread!
BGinCHI
Stock Exchange Down, Middle Class Begins Recovery.
/mental headline
Joseph Nobles
My goodness. Next conspiracy theorists will start thinking all those black churches burning is due to something malicious, instead of just glitches in the normal match to wood/gas ratio.
Loneoak
Time to start investing in mattress equities.
KG
They tried rebooting, now they have moved on to unplugging it, counting to ten and then plugging it back in
Doug R
Imploding Chinese stock market maybe means some sanity in our bat shit housing market.
Big ole hound
When will these folks outside of NYC or Wash DC realize that life beyond the stock exchanges actually exists and life will go on despite what happens for an hour.
phantomist
ELAINE: Well, I mean, he was in the apartment, and then it’s gone and it’s in your apartment.
RAVA: Maybe you think we’re in cahoots.
ELAINE: No, no.. but it is quite a coincidence.
RAVA: Yes, that’s all, a coincidence!
ELAINE: A big coincidence.
RAVA: Not a big coincidence. A coincidence!
ELAINE: No, that’s a big coincidence.
RAVA: That’s what a coincidence is! There are no small coincidences and big coincidences!
ELAINE: No, there are degrees of coincidences.
RAVA: No, there are only coincidences! ..Ask anyone! (Enraged, she asks everyone in the elevator) Are there big coincidences and small coincidences, or just coincidences? (Silent) ..Well?! Well?!..
(Everyone just kinda shrugs, then murmurs. The doors open)
MAN: Will you put that cigarette out?!
RAVA: (Pointing the lit end at him) Maybe I put it out on your face! (To Elaine) It’s just like Ray said – you and Jerry are jealous of our love. You’re trying to destroy us.
ELAINE: Shouldn’t you be out on a ledge somewhere?
Punchy
You left out the outage/glitch that suspended all United Airlines flights for a significant time today.
I think the Chinese are testing our systems. Their broken market can be fixed by a Red Dawn-esque invasion of Walla Walla.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Seems to me the people who know the most about the stock market say no one knows anything about the stock market, but I’ve been expecting a “correction” in the DJIA for a couple years now.
MattF
@KG: ‘Counting to ten’ separates the amateurs from the pros.
peach flavored shampoo
Looks like Oklahoma has decided State Supreme Court decisions are optional.
And here I thought the first constitutional crisis would be over enforcement of SSM.
Betty Cracker
The WSJ page is back up, so at least we won’t be deprived of Peggy Noonan! Oh wait…
dedc79
@KG: you skipped the step where they reboot “in safe mode.”
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: ‘Correction’ suggests that there’s something wrong that’s fixable.
In fact, the psychological model for the stock market’s ups and downs is squarely at the intersection of greed and fear. And that’s the whole story.
mai naem mobile
I’m guessing somebody has made big $$$ creating this outage. Same goes.for Bloomberg terminals going down for a couple of minutes several weeks ago in Europe.
JPL
I’ve been reading the twitter feed of reporters covering the SC House of Representatives debate on removal of the confederate battle flag. In WTF news
Representative Michael Pitts, a flag supporter, says that if you hide history, “you have a tendency to repeat it, and the stupidity of it.”
Does he think the south wants to battle the north again?
Belafon
@peach flavored shampoo: It’s only a crisis if it does not lead to a theocracy. //
Elie
— Could we actually be in the middle of a cyber war between the US and China? Could what is happening in China have anything to do with us hacking them and doing malicious things? Could our NYSE stoppage be a retaliation? How about the attack on United Airlines the last couple of days?
Something fishy?
NAH!
JPL
@Elie: It’s more likely that a bitcoin trader caused the NYSE halt, since their prices are rising.
JPL
I blame Snowden.
Roger Moore
The collapse of the Chinese stock market is the result of a massive bubble popping. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I agree with Doug R that it will return sanity to our housing market. If it doesn’t drag down the whole Chinese economy- in which case we’re all in trouble- then Chinese who want to invest are at least as likely to decide they need to put their money in something other than stocks, e.g. US real estate.
Belafon
@JPL: So he supports having the flag up so that people will remember the Civil War was fought over slavery and that South Carolina is so ashamed of it they have to be reminded constantly?
Elie
Whether my paranoid comment is true or not now, I do believe that this is what warfare will become “in the future”. The old military hardware using guns etc is so old school. China is not even trying to build military capacity to match ours. Why would they when you can control or impact so much from satellites to business transactions without military hardware. Capturing “territory” is so old school. It also requires holding that territory and a lot of hassle, expense and makes tons of future enemies that you cannot avoid.
Elie
@JPL:
Seriously? Really, I don’t know this… can you enlighten me?
FlipYrWhig
@Belafon: Sort of the same logic as in The Loneliest Runner (1976):
Confederate flag, pee sheets, same difference.
Elie
@Roger Moore:
I hear you, but could the Chinese inability to stop the slide be at all impacted by hacks to their exchange software programs that communicate inappropriate sell orders, etc? Is that conceptually impossible?
catclub
Once is an accident.
Twice is coincidence.
Three times is enemy action…. Mr Bond.
MattF
@Elie: Sad to say, there’s a respectable statistical explanation for all this. Also, shark attacks.
catclub
I found it amusing that the Chinese had forbidden selling, but forgot that such action also stops all buying.
Paul in KY
@Elie: The PRC has never been an expansionist state. Their whole ethos (and this goes back to Imperial days) is that they live in the best place on Earth & why the Hell would they want anywhere else, when they have the best. Their military has historically been designed to defend their land.
MattF
@Paul in KY: The Tibetans and the Vietnamese might disagree.
Elie
@efgoldman:
I dunno. I was just thinking of the realities of our interconnected IT and our increasing dependence on it to run large complex systems. Yes, my thought sounds paranoid. It is more a musing about potential vulnerabilities we all know about based on how things work these days… I am not ready to run out and buy gold bars to stuff in my mattress.
Roger Moore
@Elie:
It’s conceptually possible, but it fails Occam’s Razor. There’s every reason to think the Chinese stock market was experiencing a bubble, and that bubbles popping is a self-sustaining process that is highly resistant to attempts to stop it. There’s no need to look for nefarious causes for what’s going on with Chinese stocks when good old fashioned explanations will do.
Villago Delenda Est
Coincidence, my ass. The gamblers are going nuts at the activity in China, and that’s causing overloads on the NYSE. It might be “technical” in a highly technical sense, but it’s driven by gamblers going nuts.
Fuck these people. Fuck them with Dick Cheney’s diseased cock.
bystander
The ad I want to see is the clip of Trump saying, “When Mexico is sending its people, they’re not sending their best.” Then cut to the headlines about Jeb’s wife smuggling couture and trying to evade customs.
Elie
@Paul in KY:
None of what you say works against what I said…you are speaking of Chinese history. I am saying that not just China, but all major nation/states including our own, may rely less on military hardware and tactics in the future because the nature of what is being won and controlled does not require seizing geographical territory and holding it.
Elie
@Roger Moore:
Yep. You are probably right.
Thanks
Elie
@efgoldman:
LOL! Does it come with a gold bar vibrating feature?
chopper
if the NYSE is running on anything like my old commodore 64, just do what i do and switch it off and back%$$@++NO CARRIER
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
Their history is long enough that’s nonsensical to make that kind of generalization. There have been periods when their military has been primarily aimed at defense against outsiders and periods when there hasn’t been a “Chinese” military but instead a bunch of warlords who have been fighting for control. There have also been times when the Chinese military has been built for aggressive conquest, which explains why there are so many people in modern China who aren’t ethnic Han.
JPL
@Elie: Bitcoin prices are rising but I was just kidding about the hack.
catclub
@Belafon: Iran, 1979, may be an exception to this rule.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: Watch Vancouver.
Elie
@JPL:
Ok… (You can tell I know very little about bitcoin)
Paul in KY
@MattF: They consider Tibet to be part of China & the Vietnam thing was never to try & take over Vietnam, was just border war. Now I’m not talking about China pre 1800.
catclub
@MattF: Taiwan also excepted.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: What happened to transaction tax. We were promised transaction tax!
Paul in KY
@Elie: See your point. My point was that the PRC would probably never get in a conventional war to expand their territory in some manner. The other country would have to be encroaching on their territory. Maybe that can be applied in cyberspace?
JPL
@bystander: Funny! The repubs have the victim card down pat. Remember Lynn Cheney protecting her daughter.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: I meant recent history. Not the 1200s or 1600s
Roger Moore
@Elie:
Despite what I’ve said, there are good reasons for China to want to cushion the blow. Stock market crashes can have effects far beyond the stock market, and nobody sane wants this to cause their whole economy to crater. There’s also a long history of “corrections” going too far and resulting in prices that are almost as far out of whack in the opposite direction as they were before the “correction” started, so doing something to stop the crash at something close to the correct level would probably be a good idea. Otherwise, they’ll be vulnerable to vulture capitalists coming in and buying up their best companies at a bargain price.
catclub
The only reassuring thing about the Chinese stock market crash is is that because foreign investors are held at at least arms length, there will be fewer global consequences. (But that does not mean none.)
ruemara
Speaking of meltdowns and outages, I am on hold with Priceline.com. Seems my airline cancelled my reservations. An hour before my flight time. I have no way to get to SD before tomorrow evening and I’d still have to wait for the refund. I’m either about to combust in rage or have a suicidal meltdown. I could strangle every person I’ve dealt with on the phone with my bare hands.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
I don’t have to watch Vancouver to see the effects of Chinese money on housing prices; I just have to watch Arcadia. Right now, there’s a disturbing amount of construction there that involves tearing down existing housing stock and replacing it with new houses several times larger. That’s bad enough when it’s in an ordinary middle class neighborhood and you wind up with McMansions replacing typical post-war housing. It’s really scary when it’s happening in a wealthy neighborhood and it means replacing fancy post-war houses with 8000+ square foot monstrosities.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elie: Ultimately, though, it’s all about holding territory, and the resources associated with that territory, be they commodities or people, or crops that can be raised there. The catch is always that holding territory is much more difficult with a hostile populace in place there.
This is where advocates of air power miss the fucking boat, every time. You need boots on the ground to actually control territory to your advantage. You can deny full use of it with air power to others, but you can’t reap the benefits of it yourself without controlling it on the ground.
Catherine D.
@mai naem mobile: Many years ago, I worked at the Chicago Board of Trade. We were evacuated for a bomb threat, and most in my office were convinced it was called in by someone on the wrong side of a spread.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
Look at what they’re doing in the South China Sea before you go too far on about that. They may not want to engage in a conventional war to expand what they consider to be their territory, but in a lot of cases their claims are contested.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human: The parasites are working ceaselessly to prevent such a thing from happening. Peter DeFazio, a strong advocate of a transaction tax, has been faced the last three elections by Art Robinson, famous teatard loon, financed by a hedge fund parasite.
Peale
@Paul in KY: It’s just that their conception of what is their lands includes a bunch of things that aren’t.
Cacti
Skynet has become self-aware.
Run for your lives.
kc
I’d be worried about my wealth, if I had any.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
Yes. If you ignore the parts of history where China was aggressively expansionist, and you recast their recent attempts at expansionism as border wars and maintaining historical claims, they don’t look like expansionists. But the fact remains that they’ve gotten into a lot of border scuffles- they’ve gotten into them with India and the USSR as well as their war on Vietnam- just since the Communists took over. Judging on the scale of American imperialism they may not look too bad, but compared to most other countries, they’ve been one of the worst since the end of WWII.
shell
@MattF: I thought it was counting to 15.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Not to mention their aggressive “recruitment” of tributary states, throughout their history. The claims in the South China Sea are based on historical precedents.
Amir Khalid
The Donald on his popularity with Latino voters, passed on without comment.
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: That sucks. I’m sorry.
Tao of Nope
If they start giving out Pulitzers for twitter coverage, I nominate @mollycrabapple for her real-time reportage on the NYSE mess.
“I’m here in FiDi reporting from the front lines of the financial meltdown, wearing a flak jacket woven from golden parachutes”
“Warning: The spleens of tourists are being sacrificed in a pyre to the Great God Hgfjiknoohh, so he might make the shares flow again”
shell
Hot and unbelievalby humid here (last night was NOT good sleeping weather.) they keep promising thunder storms but it just wont budge.
Randy P
@KG: Tech Support found a software component that wasn’t the latest release, so they told the Stock Exchange to install all updates and marked the ticket “closed”
cckids
@ruemara: NO! You’re heading to ComicCon, right? Hopefully gets resolved FAST in your favor.
cckids
@Amir Khalid: Donald Trump is a delusional twatwaffle.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Paul in KY: Provably untrue.
Ask the Phillipines about the Spratlys, for starters, check out their recent land purchases in Africa, and then work your way backwards through history. They are not expansionist in the same way the United States is, but that is not to say that they do not have a desire to control much more territory than they do.
MattF
@efgoldman: “We’ve checked, he’s not actually human.”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ruemara:
W. T. F.? Any chance you can track down someone who’s driving down and ride with them?
Yatsuno
@Punchy:
NUUUUUUU!!! Walla Walla has 2 colleges plus really good wine. Granted it’s in Cathy McMorris-Rodgers territory but I don’t think that’s all their fault!
SiubhanDuinne
@ruemara: Oh no! And we all know how excited you’ve been about ComicCon. I hope Priceline can fix this for you, and soon. Please keep us posted.
gene108
It’s sort of interesting that without any shares being traded for a day, 99.9% of people are totally unaffected.
It’s like the whole stock market is some sort of artificial construction created by society and government, but not essential to our civilization’s day-to-day affairs, unlike say the police, doctors, nurses, ambulances, trash collection, etc.
mdblanche
@MattF: That tribbles sometimes grow really nasty tumors is another thing Cyrano Jones neglected to mention about them.
cckids
@gene108:
Shares are being traded through other venues, only the NYSE is closed. Which is why the market is down around 200 points.
Southern Goth
FTFY
You’re welcome
LanceThruster
“Spit in the back and whomp it a mite“
mdblanche
Dear Europe,
You’re not helping.
Quaker in a Basement
It’s the Obocalypse! Aieee!
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Good point.
Paul in KY
@Peale: LOLing!
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: I think the borders with USSR & India were poorly defined. They are not poorly defined now ;-)
boatboy_srq
@Elie: Gold-pressed-latinum-vibrating feature, you mean.
JPL
@Southern Goth: Someone is gonna be looking for a job
Traders were reportedly told that the problem was related to a software update.
Pee Cee
I imagine something like this going on in the server room.
Paul in KY
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I just meant that they weren’t into conquering a bunch of other countries (ala Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan). Recently too.
p.a.
@catclub: they’re still new at this crony capitalism thingy. Im fact, they may be inventing a new type. Crony something ism.
catclub
Relevant!
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-08/don-t-panic-market-fragmentation-will-save-you-
cckids
I’m evil for finding this humorous, but the explanations I’m hearing on CNBC about the NYSE problems make me laugh. The theory right now is that there was a software update, which caused “connectivity issues” at the start of the day, and the “fix” they tried for that cascaded and caused the shutdown.
My mind immediately went to those infuriating Microsoft “updates” that periodically overtake my computer when I start it up, and the issues some of those cause. I’m sure that isn’t the case, but . . . why not speculate??
p.a.
@Elie: and it’s heated by burning worthless hyperinflated US dollars.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
I believe the ChiComs claim the rights to Arunal Chal Pradesh state in eastern India. The India-China border is fairly heavily militarized.
China may not be looking to do a Nazi Germany level land grab, but they have their eyes on expanding their borders, with respect to parts of India, Taiwan, etc.
catclub
@cckids:
But wait, this is Wednesday, MS updates run on Tuesday, right?
Fair Economist
@gene108: China hasn’t tried world-spanning imperialism since the early Tang, but they are often trying to Sinicize/tributary/conquer states on their borders. Over 2000 years it’s added up.
Bobby B.
“My God…this changes everything!”
-used in a million and one examples of bad storytelling. Tell Chuck Todd.
patroclus
If it is indeed Shynet becoming self-aware, I’m very wary about them turning the system back on.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
It’s probably just that Goldman Sachs’s or JPMorgan’s high speed trade computer is glitchy, which means they’re not jumping everyone else’s trades, which means they’re not making as much money as normal – and might even be losing money. And, we just can’t have that so they’re shutting down the whole exchange until said bank can start printing money again.
mdblanche
@p.a.: Crony capitalism with Chinese characteristics?
shell
That comes right after the General Tso;s Chicken
catclub
From a Zero Hedge posting. Dreams of greatness?
catclub
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Too bad you missed all the mentions that trading is continuing on the ten other exchanges, with no noticeable change in volume.
JPL
And the NYSE trades again.
KG
@dedc79: i always skip the “safe mode” reboot. never understood that.
Also, this wouldn’t have happened if they were using a Mac system
(ducks and runs for cover)
Roger Moore
@KG:
There’s no system so perfect that it can’t be ruined by an incompetent sysadmin.
John Revolta
Alls I know is, when the market comes back up, I’m investing HEAVILY in tin foil futures. And popcorn.
SWMBO
OT: I have a question. Currently we have 4 or so Democrats running for President. The GOP has 16-23 (JK). When do they get Secret Service coverage? If the GOP is running on spending less (on children, old folks, disabled and unemployed–not for them), when does that coverage start? Not just grifting for big wallets but actually having SS coverage to make their run legitimate?
Elie
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think you are pretty much thinking 20th century. I am not sure that you could not “control” a country through IT capabilities that would allow you to take over major business (banking?) and other strategic functionality long enough to render the target completely destabilized. Maybe that is at some very lofty point in the future, but thinking you need to actually physically occupy a territory to control it may not be true.
SWMBO
@Elie: Hells bells. Just have China buy Congress and they won’t need IT.
KG
@Roger Moore: a fair point.
KG
@Elie: a good worm in the right network(s) could pretty much destroy an industry and severely damage several other industries that rely on it for business. more effective than the neutrino bomb at the beginning of Dark Angel.
SiubhanDuinne
@SWMBO:
Apparently it’s up to Jeh Johnson (of course, Hillary gets it anyway because she’s a former FLOTUS/SoS).
ruemara
I told Priceline they could suck on their refund; I want a flight to SD today. Long shot benefit of sounding like a cold sociopath in a rage, you can get what you want. I’m all checked in with a 3 hrs wait, but purportedly a flight seat. If they fail, you can all say you remember me before I discovered that anger makes you evolve into a fiery metahuman with aggression issues.
I have to laugh, at this point, this script is farcial.
John Revolta
@Catherine D.: That’s weird……….I was working in a bank in the Loop at that time.
And now here we both are.
Coincidence?…………………………..
SWMBO
@ruemara: You go, Girl! One way or another, you go!
Elie
@KG:
I am not saying this is happening, but just saying that as the US military is about to lay off thousands returning from Afghanistan. I am thinking that they days of large numbers of troops invading and holding territory are going away. Controlling “territory” may depend on what we are calling territory. We are so dependent on electronic systems to retrieve our money, run our utilities, provide access to water, etc… As you say, whole industrial capabilities could be “invaded” and overrided or controlled to do different things…
Roger Moore
@KG:
The scary thing is that it would actually be far easier to design a worm that would cause mass, indiscriminate damage than one that would be carefully targeted. It might even happen if you tried to make something targeted but messed up. A true nihilist could cause amazing havoc.
SiubhanDuinne
@ruemara:
Good for you! Safe and smooth travels from here on out. And have fun at Con!
KG
@Elie: i tend to agree, i think the age of wars of conquest (which are wars to control territory) died in or about 1947, with a few exceptions. everything since has been ideologically or resource driven, and i think those types of wars are slowly dying.
@Roger Moore: true, i don’t know much about how worms actually work, but i’m guessing most aren’t designed to really discriminate from network to network.
Elie
@KG:
Yeah — it – the meaning of territory evolves…. Its probably a good way to start thinking about power and the role of geopolitics — or its impact on geopolitics. In some ways, ISIS with its caliphate without national boundaries pre-sages a version of this?
catclub
@Elie:
NO. When the whole world knows that the only way to oust ISIS from the regions it controls is ground forces ( either Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni, Iraqi Shiite, or US soldiers). Then the new model of conquest without control of land, has NOT arrived.
Roy G.
Tricky Dick knew how to deal with the Chinese: Remember Quemoy and Matsu!
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2010/0912/comm/norris_quemoymatsu.html
Lurking Canadian
@cckids: When Obama hit him with the line about “clowns and carnival barkers” back in 2012, I think something broke inside him. That level of (well-deserved, public) contempt would sting anybody, but for a blowhard like Trump, used to having his backside kissed at every turn…
Botsplainer
@ruemara:
Go with a friendly brick and mortar travel agent. That little service fee is worth having somebody around to fix crises. Plus, they’ve got broader, better scheduling data.
Botsplainer
So I’ve had three older lawyers inform me about how great a Trump presidency would be.
SWMBO
@efgoldman: Since when does Congress have to follow the law?
Kathleen
@ruemara: I’m glad it is resolved. You do deserve to go Full Metal MadPerson should there be glitches. Why did your flight get cancelled? Was it part of the United mess?
Elie
@catclub:
Well you have a point there.
J R in WV
@cckids:
No, no, an ambiguous twatwaddle!
J R in WV
@cckids:
Don’t be so sure. Microsoft software now runs many mission-critical servers, a thing I would never allow in an IT environment I controlled. For that very reason, among many others.
When I get those phone calls about how “they have detected that my computer has severe virus problems that are causing problems in many locations, and they will help me rid my system of those virii at no fee…” I tell them that while I have many computers, none of them run windows, none at all.
“Really?” they ask. “Really.” I say. “Furthermore,” I tell them, “you are engaging in a well known illegal scam, best of luck avoiding the police officers listening to this phone call!”
It is to laugh. They hang up then!!!