Why not to freak out about the NYSE trading halt
Try not to freak out too much about Wednesday’s New York Stock Exchange outage. First, it’s over, though many questions remain as to what happened and what NYSE is doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But more importantly, stocks were still bought and sold all day, even while the NYSE halted trading.
Think of it like a time when you had a broken faucet at your house. You clearly didn’t die of thirst. You went to another sink and had a drink of water. Stock markets work something like that. There are 11 exchanges (not to mention dozens more private trading venues). If one is down, orders to buy and sell can be filled at other exchanges.
And at the end of the day, Marketplace will still do the numbers. We promise.
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