13 ms·

Trading Halted in Nasdaq-Listed Securities Due to Technical Issue

140 points by tomorgan 13y ago

MisterWebz 13y ago
What's up with all the technical issues and outages lately? Has there been an increase or is it because we're paying more attention to it?
- njharman 13y ago
  Vast increase of electronic exchanges, automation, increased number of customers and products.
- consz 13y ago
  How many are there? AFAIK the last technical issue was a NASDAQ break during the FB IPO, which was a little over a year ago. One severe error per year is not a lot, I think.
pwniekins 13y ago
OH GOD WHAT IS HUMANITY GOING TO DO IF THE STOCK MARKET GOES OFFLINE!?!? Keep it down. Fucking good riddance.
- jscheel 13y ago
  Well, to be fair, your life would probably suck pretty hard if the market was to stay offline. Tis the world we inhabit :)
- synaesthesisx 13y ago
  You do realize society would completely implode and descend into utter chaos, right?
the-swa 13y ago
Security flaws in financial institutions has got to be one of my greatest fears. Wall street doesn't understand software[0][1] yet they rely so heavily on it with algorithmic trading[2]. The day that something goes terribly wrong, they're going to have no idea what happened... [0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/six-year-old-st/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/six-year-old-st/ [1] http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol... [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_o...
- fixxer 13y ago
  With exchanges, the cure is quite simple: stop breaking bad trades. If Goldman had to eat every fat finger error, the would adopt better procedures for avoiding them..
  - kasey_junk 13y ago
    That might be a cure for Goldman fat fingers, but it won't be a cure for an exchange's security problems. If an entity gets a bad trade due to fraudulent security violations, It seems fair for them to expect the exchange to bust that trade.
    - fixxer 13y ago
      Sure, I'll buy that. I think it is fair to say that 99% of the problems are on the client side... at least, that is how I made my bonus ;) I always loved it when 10@100 became 100@10.
    - cschneid 13y ago
      That is the #1 part of the last Batman movie that annoyed me. "ohh he's broke because ... of an attack on the stock exchange during which a giant totally weird trade was made".
      - vijucat 13y ago
        A solid amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy Christopher Nolan movies. It's quite awkward, actually, but it works because people love a good story more than reality (, which is quite relevant to entrepreneurship / pitching! :-) )
- kasey_junk 13y ago
  You could say the same thing about the energy grid, our military, etc. Not that you are wrong, but Wall Street melting down is way easier to back out of than a nuclear plant.
minimax 13y ago
It sounds like NASDAQ is having a problem with the Tape C consolidated feed (which they administer). Here's some good places to watch for updates: http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=MarketSystemStatus http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=MarketSystemStatu... http://markets.nyx.com/nyse/market-status http://markets.nyx.com/nyse/market-status http://www.batstrading.com/alerts/ http://www.batstrading.com/alerts/ https://www.directedge.com/Alerts.aspx https://www.directedge.com/Alerts.aspx edit: Notes for people trying to understand the jargon. The UTP SIP is the consolidated feed for Tape C (i.e. NASDAQ listed) securities. In this case, the feed is composed of two parts: UTDF and UQDF. The UTDF is a feed of last sale prices and the UQDF is the feed of the best quotes from the various U.S. equity exchanges. It sounds like the problem is with the quote feed (UQDF). That's why they've halted trading on NASDAQ listed equities at all the other exchanges. These days almost everyone takes market data directly from each exchange and builds their own view of the market, so losing the consolidated feed wouldn't be a huge deal, except that it isn't clear what should happen to stay in compliance with Reg NMS when the consolidated feed is down.
- kjackson2012 13y ago
  Does "almost everyone" mean the retail brokerages, like E-trade, TDAmeritrade, etc, or just the HFTs, hedge funds, etc?
  - cube13 13y ago
    Like chollida1 noted, it's more likely that pretty much everyone(even HFT outfits) are getting their data through one of the major providers like Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters. The real difference between HFTs, online retail brokerages, standard brokers, and others, is the quality of service for the data that they're consuming. The more current the data you're getting, the more expensive it is. That's why the tickers on CNBC or Fox Business are 20 minutes delayed-that data is effectively free at that point. For a HFT algo trading outfit, they're looking at buying the fastest, most expensive data, which is real-time full tick. That means that they're going to be getting every single quote and trade for a given instrument from the provider. I would imagine that the online brokerages are also consuming this data, because that would give them a slight edge with price matching for their clients. For normal day traders or brokers, they're probably using a terminal provided by their data provider(i.e. Bloomberg Terminal, Thomson Reuters Eikon, or Thomson One). Since these are human display apps, there's a lot more lag time allowed, typically in the hundreds of milliseconds to low single digit seconds. Here, the data is often conflated, so multiple quotes are combined to show the last known data state for the instrument. This saves on bandwidth and processing time, which is good if you're not colocated at the exchange.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
excitom 13y ago
"UPDATE 3: CNBC reports the Securities and Exchange Comission is monitoring the situation." Wow, CNBC, what would we do without your valuable insight?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
PaulHoule 13y ago
For once, this headline understates the story. My first thought was "Why does this belong on hacker news" because they stop trading specific securities all the time. But a system crash is another thing.
photorized 13y ago
Google had an outage a couple of days ago, so did Amazon. Now this. Interesting timing.

140 points by tomorgan 13y ago

What's up with all the technical issues and outages lately? Has there been an increase or is it because we're paying more attention to it?

njharman 13y ago
Vast increase of electronic exchanges, automation, increased number of customers and products.
consz 13y ago
How many are there? AFAIK the last technical issue was a NASDAQ break during the FB IPO, which was a little over a year ago. One severe error per year is not a lot, I think.

pwniekins 13y ago

OH GOD WHAT IS HUMANITY GOING TO DO IF THE STOCK MARKET GOES OFFLINE!?!? Keep it down. Fucking good riddance.

jscheel 13y ago
Well, to be fair, your life would probably suck pretty hard if the market was to stay offline. Tis the world we inhabit :)
synaesthesisx 13y ago
You do realize society would completely implode and descend into utter chaos, right?

the-swa 13y ago

Security flaws in financial institutions has got to be one of my greatest fears. Wall street doesn't understand software[0][1] yet they rely so heavily on it with algorithmic trading[2]. The day that something goes terribly wrong, they're going to have no idea what happened... [0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/six-year-old-st/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/six-year-old-st/ [1] http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol... [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_o...

fixxer 13y ago
With exchanges, the cure is quite simple: stop breaking bad trades. If Goldman had to eat every fat finger error, the would adopt better procedures for avoiding them..
- kasey_junk 13y ago
  That might be a cure for Goldman fat fingers, but it won't be a cure for an exchange's security problems. If an entity gets a bad trade due to fraudulent security violations, It seems fair for them to expect the exchange to bust that trade.
  - fixxer 13y ago
    Sure, I'll buy that. I think it is fair to say that 99% of the problems are on the client side... at least, that is how I made my bonus ;) I always loved it when 10@100 became 100@10.
  - cschneid 13y ago
    That is the #1 part of the last Batman movie that annoyed me. "ohh he's broke because ... of an attack on the stock exchange during which a giant totally weird trade was made".
    - vijucat 13y ago
      A solid amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy Christopher Nolan movies. It's quite awkward, actually, but it works because people love a good story more than reality (, which is quite relevant to entrepreneurship / pitching! :-) )
kasey_junk 13y ago
You could say the same thing about the energy grid, our military, etc. Not that you are wrong, but Wall Street melting down is way easier to back out of than a nuclear plant.

minimax 13y ago

It sounds like NASDAQ is having a problem with the Tape C consolidated feed (which they administer). Here's some good places to watch for updates: http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=MarketSystemStatus http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=MarketSystemStatu... http://markets.nyx.com/nyse/market-status http://markets.nyx.com/nyse/market-status http://www.batstrading.com/alerts/ http://www.batstrading.com/alerts/ https://www.directedge.com/Alerts.aspx https://www.directedge.com/Alerts.aspx edit: Notes for people trying to understand the jargon. The UTP SIP is the consolidated feed for Tape C (i.e. NASDAQ listed) securities. In this case, the feed is composed of two parts: UTDF and UQDF. The UTDF is a feed of last sale prices and the UQDF is the feed of the best quotes from the various U.S. equity exchanges. It sounds like the problem is with the quote feed (UQDF). That's why they've halted trading on NASDAQ listed equities at all the other exchanges. These days almost everyone takes market data directly from each exchange and builds their own view of the market, so losing the consolidated feed wouldn't be a huge deal, except that it isn't clear what should happen to stay in compliance with Reg NMS when the consolidated feed is down.

kjackson2012 13y ago
Does "almost everyone" mean the retail brokerages, like E-trade, TDAmeritrade, etc, or just the HFTs, hedge funds, etc?
- cube13 13y ago
  Like chollida1 noted, it's more likely that pretty much everyone(even HFT outfits) are getting their data through one of the major providers like Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters. The real difference between HFTs, online retail brokerages, standard brokers, and others, is the quality of service for the data that they're consuming. The more current the data you're getting, the more expensive it is. That's why the tickers on CNBC or Fox Business are 20 minutes delayed-that data is effectively free at that point. For a HFT algo trading outfit, they're looking at buying the fastest, most expensive data, which is real-time full tick. That means that they're going to be getting every single quote and trade for a given instrument from the provider. I would imagine that the online brokerages are also consuming this data, because that would give them a slight edge with price matching for their clients. For normal day traders or brokers, they're probably using a terminal provided by their data provider(i.e. Bloomberg Terminal, Thomson Reuters Eikon, or Thomson One). Since these are human display apps, there's a lot more lag time allowed, typically in the hundreds of milliseconds to low single digit seconds. Here, the data is often conflated, so multiple quotes are combined to show the last known data state for the instrument. This saves on bandwidth and processing time, which is good if you're not colocated at the exchange.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

excitom 13y ago

"UPDATE 3: CNBC reports the Securities and Exchange Comission is monitoring the situation." Wow, CNBC, what would we do without your valuable insight?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

PaulHoule 13y ago

For once, this headline understates the story. My first thought was "Why does this belong on hacker news" because they stop trading specific securities all the time. But a system crash is another thing.

photorized 13y ago

Google had an outage a couple of days ago, so did Amazon. Now this. Interesting timing.