After Berkshire Crashes To 0, NYSE Says “Technical Issue Has Been Resolved” And All Systems Operational

Update (12:02pm ET): After a cascade of circuit breakers pushed various NYSE stocks and instantly halted trading, the Exchange said in an email that the technical issue with industrywide price bands published by the CTA SIP has been resolved and all systems are currently operational.

All impacted stocks have reopened
Price band issue has been resolved
Issue triggered trading halts in a number of NYSE listed stocks

As we noted earlier, the technical error at the New York Stock Exchange resulted in numerous erroneous trading volatility halts, including for Berkshire, Chipotle and Abbott :abs, and odd trades in at least two stocks early in the cash session Monday. Bloomberg adds that the forced pauses, which began shortly before 9:45 a.m. in New York, were resolved not long after 11 a.m. and the stocks resumed normal trading, according to statements from NYSE. The firm said a technical issue with the “industry-wide” price bands published by the Consolidated Tape Association Securities Information Processor led to the halts.

As we also noted earlier, trades Berkshire Hathaway/A shares appeared to go off at mistaken prices. About a dozen trades showed shares changed hands at $185.10 around 9:50 a.m., a discount of 99.97% to Friday’s closing price of $627,400. NuScale Power had a similar glitch, with trades that printed at about 99% below the prior price.

“It’s very confusing that it’s happening in just a few shares,” said Jonathan Corpina, senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, who typically works on the floor of the NYSE. “I would assume that those bad trades will be broken.”

A representative for NYSE declined to comment on the matter beyond the exchange’s market status update page. Intercontinental Exchange Inc. is the owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

The limit up-limit down trading bands typically govern when stocks are paused for volatility. The SIP is a single data feed where regulatory bodies process and consolidate bid and ask quotes and trades from all US exchanges. The sudden disruptions Monday come just days after a glitch left the S&P 500 Index without live pricing for an hour, and as the market adapts to quicker settlement times for US stock trades.

“A little weird, but almost undoubtedly coincidental,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers LLC, of the NYSE issue after last week’s S&P 500 Index glitch. “We’ve gotten used to huge amounts of uptimes without exchange incidents, so when a couple of glitches in a row occur it is notable.”

Chipotle was down 1.2% at 9:44 a.m. New York time when it was halted. Abbott gained as much as 1.9% on Monday. Halts are normally triggered by a series of factors, most commonly for rapid and large changes in price and volume. Chipotle resumed trading at 10:21 a.m. in New York and was down about 2.5%.

* * *

Something snapped just after 9:40 am, when as the market was still reeling from the latest idiotic move in meme stonks, we just saw one of the world’s largest companies – Berkshire Hathaway – wipe out just about 100% of its value and crash to basically zero…

… amid a cascading wave of trading halts sparked by a break at the NYSE:

*MULTIPLE NYSE STOCKS SHOWING VOLATILITY TRADING HALTS

… which the exchange quickly admitted it was at fault for.

*NYSE EQUITIES INVESTIGATING REPORTED TECHNICAL ISSUE

The full list of halts can be found on the NYSE site and includes the following names:

Among other notable names that crashed and were halted on a Limit Up, Limit Down Circuit breaker were Chiptole, BMO, NuScale.

And while we wait to learn what exactly caused today’s “market break” which may have just afforded us a glimpse of true market values, we can only reminds readers of the immortal words of the Big Lebowski: