By Chris Dieterich
NEW YORK--Rival exchanges stopped sending orders to the Big
Board after operator NYSE Euronext (NYX) reported an issue
executing trades in more than 200 stocks shortly after Monday's
opening bell.
NYSE said in an alert to traders at 9:39 a.m. EST that its
equity market was experiencing an "issue" with one of its engines
that match up buy and sell orders and that 216 issues were
affected, including CVS Caremark Corp. (CVS), Lazard Ltd. (LAZ) and
United States Steel Corp. (X).
BATS Global Markets, an exchange operator based in Lenexa, Kan.,
declared "self-help" against the NYSE in the minutes after the
open, meaning it stopped sending the NYSE orders. Exchange
operators Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ) and Direct Edge Holdings LLC
followed suit.
Exchanges can declare self-help when another market is slow to
respond to incoming orders or if the flow of information to and
from the exchange is disrupted.
None of the exchanges had revoked the self-help declaration as
of 11 a.m., meaning they weren't routing orders to the NYSE.
The NYSE said in a notice to traders at 11:18 a.m. that it had
"completed its recovery" of the matching engine. It added that all
its trading systems then were "functioning normally."
-By Write to Chris Dieterich at
christopher.dieterich@dowjones.com
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