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Shut down at New York Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange was shut down for four hours Wednesday morning after reported technical glitches halted all activity until midday. The same morning an economic-collapsing Greece’s requested for a three-year bailout from the European Union.

At 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning orders from numerous small stocks failed to send. Traders on the floor of the NYSE had no warning of the crash, according to the New York Times.

“The issues we are experiencing is an internal technical issue and is not the result of a cyber breach,” the NYSE tweeted after the initial technical problems.

The shut down occurred soon after the United Airlines grounded all of its current flights due to technical issues and a brief crash of the Wall Street Journal’s website.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty at the moment. You just don’t know what happened in New York,” said Wade Martin, Chair of the Economics Department at California State University, Long Beach. “If you rely more on a software-driven world we’re going to have more glitches in the software.”

Later that morning the problems at the NYSE were more widespread and started to affect more stocks, according to the New York Times.

Trading resumed during the shut down due to the United States’ 10 other global stock exchanges.

“So much of the trading volume relies on program trading, that it is a major issue if there’s a glitch in the software,” Martin said. “Until [the NYSE] really know and release what happened…from what I’ve seen, they don’t expect it to be related to hackers or terrorism or anything like that.”

Although the NYSE has crashed several times, this particular shut down weighs a bit more heavily on the affected traders due to the current economic situation in Greece.

After the countrywide closing of banks, Greece requested a three-year bailout loan from the European Union. Instead of negotiating with the central bank, Greece decided to speak directly to EU parliament, Martin said.

“The magnitude of it [is] very difficult to predict,” Martin said. “Greece is a small part of our trading inset; it’s not a direct Greece to U.S. problem as much as it is to the EU and what happens to the Eurozone. Stable currencies are always important.”

Greece may be an ocean away, but their crashing economy could affect the United States’ stock exchange.

“Particularly with trades occurring in Nano-seconds, any glitch is problematic. I don’t think it’s anything that would change the future of Greek debt negations,” Martin said. “It’s not like there was a major sell-off in New York due to the Greek’s proposal in the investment market.”

While traders, economists and passersby wait for a clear reason to the NYSE’s out-of-the-blue shut down, the Chinese stock exchange is in the midst of a major sell-off.

A number of Chinese companies’ shares were suspended across China’s two stock markets Wednesday morning after their value dropped by 10 percent, according to the Guardian. On Tuesday almost 1,400 companies filed for a “trading halt” in an attempt to prevent future drops in stock value.

“Students [at CSULB] who are from China and know what’s happening at the Chinese stock exchange would only be affected if they are here on their parent’s money or [if they had] money invested in that market,” Martin said.

Chinese exchange students sponsored by the government would most likely not notice an impact.

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