A New York Stock Exchange server outage interrupted the delivery
of trade data on dozens of stocks for about an hour Tuesday,
according to the exchange.
The episode was the latest disruption of reporting to the
so-called consolidated tape, the record of securities transactions
across all U.S. exchanges. Financial firms, news agencies and
regulators rely on the consolidated tape to track market activity,
though exchanges also sell direct data feeds that provide more
detailed information. A similar outage also affected Nasdaq-listed
stocks last week.
Starting at 2:10 p.m. EST on Tuesday, the NYSE began
"experiencing an issue publishing trade and quote information" in
stocks with symbols ranging from SJ to TCZ, it said in a notice to
customers. Stocks in that range include SunTrust Banks Inc. (STI),
State Street Corp. (STT) and St. June Medical Inc. (STJ).
The exchange had recovered as of 3:05 p.m., it said in a later
memo.
An NYSE spokesman said the issue stemmed from a server failure.
It affected the reporting of trades and quotes in 165 stock
symbols, he said. The exchange is owned by NYSE Euronext (NYX).
On Thursday, a separate issue hampered the dissemination of
trade data on all Nasdaq-listed securities to the consolidated
tape.
Market-data problems can cause activity to "either slow way down
or come to a stop" as traders ensure they are looking at current
information on what is happening, said Keith Bliss, senior vice
president at Cuttone & Co., an NYSE member firm. Timely,
accurate information is essential to traders trying to ensure they
are finding the best place to execute customers' orders, he
said.
Several market participants working Tuesday afternoon said the
NYSE problem was small enough that it didn't affect their
trading.
Write to Matt Jarzemsky at matthew.jarzemsky@dowjones.com
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