NEW YORK — A technical glitch caused the temporary halt of a number of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, including at least one whose price briefly fell nearly 100%.
Berkshire Hathaway, the company led by famed investor Warren Buffett, saw its A-class shares fall 99.97% to $185.10 from Friday’s closing price of $627,400 before trading was halted. After the shares later resumed trading, they immediately recouped all these losses and shot towards $700,000.
During the halt, Berkshire Hathaway’s cheaper B-class shares, which typically trade alongside A-class shares, appeared to trade more normally.
The New York Stock Exchange said in a trading update on Monday that trading was halted “in a number of stocks” after a technical problem related to the publication of some price data. “The affected stocks have since reopened (or are in the process of reopening) and the price banding issue has been resolved,” it said shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
The exchange did not provide a complete list of the affected shares, but trading in Berkshire Hathaway’s A-class shares was possible. stopped at 9:50 am Eastern Time, just before the NYSE first said it was investigating a technical issue.
This is not the first disruption on Wall Street recently. The last weeks&P Dow Jones Indices said an issue is the publication of real-time prices for the widely followed S&P500 index for more than an hour during Thursday’s late morning trading.
The sector has just switched to a new system in which the settlement of share transactions is much faster than before. Now, most stock transactions must be completed within one business day after a deal closes, instead of the previous two-day requirement.
The change was proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission after the “meme stock” craze of early 2021 put incredible pressure on the market, eventually leading some brokers to restrict purchases of GameStop and other stocks. That caused a lot of anger among their customers.
