A slew of stocks were briefly halted for trading on the New York Stock Exchange, shortly after the market opened on Tuesday.
Most of the stocks have resumed trading. NYSE did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
An update on the stock exchange’s website said all systems were operational after initial outage at the opening bell.
“What appears to have happened is a technical glitch where all of my opening orders on the NYSE autocancelled even though some of them should have been fulfilled,” said Dennis Dick, trader at Triple D Trading.
“They have corrected that now but this is going to be a big mess to clean up.”
After closing Monday at $45.03, Wells Fargo fell as low as $38.10 before bouncing back, while Morgan Stanley plunged to $84.93 after ending at $97.13 on Monday. Altria Group stock went from $44 to $51, then to $38 and then back to $45.
Morgan Stanley saw similar gyrations before quickly recovering. The price action bears hallmarks of past episodes in which mistaken trades led to sudden price distortions.
Tuesday’s transactions occurred in New York Stock Exchange-listed securities and took place on virtually every trading platform, including ones overseen by CBOE Global Markets and private venues reporting to the Finra trade reporting facility.
Other impacted stocks included the likes of Walmart Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. These stocks saw drops of at least 12% before they were halted. Their moves have now rebounded to less than 1% in either direction.
Tweets suggest system incorrectly cancelled opening orders on some NYSE stocks at 9:30:00 and this caused book to clear opening price at erroneous prices on some stocks.