NYSE glitch forces Amazon and Alphabet traders elsewhere

By John McCrank and Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange said on Wednesday that trading was suspended on its exchange in five stocks, including Amazon and Alphabet, for the rest of the day due to a technical glitch involving trade reporting.

The exchange, which is owned by Intercontinental Exchange Inc (NYSE: ICE), said the suspension was due to a "price scale code" issue and any open orders in those securities would be canceled.

The securities can still be traded on other exchanges, including those run by Nasdaq Inc (NASDAQ: NDAQ), where the affected stocks are listed, Cboe Global Markets (NASDAQ: CBOE) and IEX Group.

Aside from Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and both Alphabet share classes (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG), affected symbols included Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) and Zion Oil and Gas Equity Warrants (NASDAQ: ZNWAA).

A spokeswoman for the NYSE, Kristen Kaus, said the issue affected a small subset of clients whose trading reports in the affected symbols were being returned in an unexpected format, so the exchange suspended trading in the five securities to minimize customer impact.

There are 13 U.S. stock exchanges, around 40 private trading venues known as dark pools and dozens of single-dealer platforms. The NYSE trading suspension highlights the complexity of the fragmented market, but also its resiliency, given that stocks can trade elsewhere when one exchange has a problem.

The NYSE is one of last U.S. exchanges to have a physical trading floor, and prior to April 9, only securities that were listed on the exchange could be traded there. But following a recent technology upgrade, the NYSE said it would begin trading securities listed on other exchanges as well.

The trading suspension was not likely related to the technology upgrade, Kaus said.

In March, the NYSE and two of its affiliate exchanges were fined $14 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, partly in response to a nearly four-hour trading halt in July 2015 that was the result of a flawed software roll out.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and John McCrank; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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