NYSE halt called ‘just a fluke’ Local brokers weather storm during shutdown

BANGOR – More questions from clients than stock orders greeted regional investment companies Friday morning as the New York Stock Exchange halted trading for almost 11/2 hours because of a software problem.

“Well, it’s been a little bit chaotic,” said Jeff Chapman, a broker with AG Edwards and Sons in Bangor, during the halt. “It raises a lot of questions for clients.”

The NYSE opened as scheduled at 9:30 a.m., but about 60 percent of the board was not lit up because of a software glitch. Instead of allowing trading on the other stocks, NYSE shut down entirely shortly after 10 a.m. until the problem was fixed. Trading resumed at 11:35 a.m.

The stoppage, brokers said, was out of fairness not only to the buyers, sellers and holders of stock, but also to the 30 companies that make up the exchange.

“If no one can trade, no one is at a particular disadvantage,” said Paul Ahern, president of BTI Financial Group in Bar Harbor.

“Anyone who wanted to post a trade had to wait,” said Mike Tuell, vice president of Means Investment Co. in Bangor.

Other markets, such as Nasdaq and the American Stock Exchange, were still trading while NYSE was down.During the trading halt, brokers in the area were not sitting on their hands. Intel and Microsoft, which are listed on Nasdaq but are components of the NYSE, still were being traded. Because of that, people watching any financial news television channel would have seen NYSE numbers going up and down through the halt, Tuell said.

“I did put in some orders this morning,” Tuell said. “It’s not like we have a total blackout.”

“Essentially half the market’s still open,” said Greg Piasio, senior vice president of Livada Securities in Portland. Livada is owned by Bangor Savings Bank. “Nasdaq does more volume than the New York Stock Exchange.”

Brokers said they were going to consider the market’s restart as if it were an opening on any other day.

“It won’t be any different than if they opened at 9:30,” Piasio said. “It’s not all that big of an event. I just think this is a fluke.”

The brokers said they are familiar with market halts. Until recently, Nasdaq would have a tendency to stop for a few minutes at a time because of computer glitches.

NYSE, though, considered the more prestigious of the markets, only had a computer problem once before, in October 1998.

“It’s fairly unique I would say,” Piasio said.

The brokers said most of their clients didn’t express any worries about losing money because the stoppage was viewed as if the market were closed at night.

Plus, many of their clients are not traders, people who buy and sell stocks regularly instead of holding on to them for a longer period of time.

“We have more buy-and-hold type people, definitely,” Piasio said.

If the stoppage were another day or month, such as a Monday in October, the brokers said they’d be more concerned. Volume tends to slow later in the week and in summer months.

“Fortunately it’s Friday and it’s good weather,” Chapman said.

Shortly after 11:30 a.m., the exchange sent a message out over its ticker that the market would reopen in four minutes. That was a relief to the brokers, who speculated that it would be hard to estimate what kind of an impact any long-term stoppage would have on trading and stock valuations.

“If it had been out for a long period of time, it would have given people heart palpitations,” Tuell said. “No doubt.”