Stocks close lower after 3-hour outage snarls NYSE trading

All trading on the New York Stock Exchange resumed Wednesday afternoon after being halted for almost four hours for undisclosed internal technical reasons.

The NYSE also experienced technical issues at 10:37 a.m., but resolved those problems, according to its website.

Wall Street maintained its losses after the release of minutes of a June Federal Reserve policy meeting in which officials said they needed to see more signs of a strengthening USA economy before raising interest rates.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Obama was briefed by White House counterterrorism and homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco and chief of staff Denis McDonough.

“At this point, there is no indication that malicious actors are involved in this technology issues”.

The trading halt at the NYSE came on the same day United Continental had to temporarily ground its flights across the country because of computer problems.

Earnest said the NYSE has been in close contact with the Department of Homeland Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department.

Investors were still able to buy and sell stocks because there was no interruption at the dozens of other United States stock exchanges, including the Nasdaq. Around the same time, the homepage of the Wall Street Journal was down and United Airlines grounded all its flights due to computer outages.

“There may have been glitches that have stopped things for a little while – [but] not this long and not the whole market”, he said of previous stock exchange glitches.

“This is a minor technical issue”. “The fear that there won’t be a bailout for Greece combined with what’s going on in China”. And the Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) dropped 85.15 points, or 1.7 percent, to 4,912.99.

However, many traders said that it did not matter that the NYSE was down.

“People can trade. If you’re a retail customer you won’t notice the difference in how the order is handled”, said James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University who has testified before Congress on market structure issues. And experts said such glitches are to be expected in an increasingly electronic, automated market. “We had some technical problems even before the opening”, said Art Cashin, director of floor operations a the stock exchange.

Tesla Motors fell 4.82 percent to $254.96 after Pacific Crest downgraded the stock to “sector weight” from “overweight”, the second rating cut in two days.

The NYSE, Nasdaq, and BATS each handle around 20 percent of stock trading during most months. Copper gained 5 cents to $2.50.

The NYSE is not the only one suffering from technical failures today. The Dow was down about 175 points when NYSE halted trading.