July 8, 2015

The New York Stock Exchange Has a Long History of Shutdowns

A brief rundown of glitches and errors on Wall Street.

People sit outside the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, before the exchange suspending trading of securities due to an unknown computer glitch.Seth Wenig/AP

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Just after 11:32 am on Wednesday, the New York Stock Exchange experienced an extremely rare halt in all trading. NYSE leadership cited “an internal technical issue” and not, as many feared, a cyber attack.

It’s not the first time a random event has interrupted the 223-year-old stock exchange. Most memorably, the NYSE closed following V-J Day, when troops returned at the end of World War II, and for three full days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But the NYSE has closed for everything from the funerals of major world figures—such as Queen Victoria of England (1901), Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), and Richard Nixon (1994)—to extreme heat (August 4, 1917).

Here is a brief history of events that halted trading at the New York Stock Exchange.

September 1873: The collapse of the Jay Cooke & Company, a major financial institution, caused the New York Stock Exchange’s first closure, for 10 days, due to market calamity. 

July 1914: The start of World War I in Europe shuttered the exchange for four months, the longest closure on record.

May 25, 1946: The NYSE shut down due to a railroad strike, part of one of the largest waves of strikes in US history.

1967 – 1996: Over this span of 29 years, eight ferocious blizzards either delayed the opening bell or closed the exchange early.

February 10, 1969: A snowstorm dubbed the “Lindsay Storm” shuttered the stock exchange for a day and a half amid 15.3 inches of snow.

July 21, 1969: This closure was planned, to celebrate the Apollo 11 moon landing.

July 14, 1977: The NYSE closed due to a major blackout across New York City.

October 27, 1997: A failsafe instantaneously stopped all trading for 30 minutes after the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 350 points.

May 6, 2010: The same circuit breaker that closed the NYSE in 1997 halted trading after a “flash crash” caused by automated high-frequency trading.

September 11, 2001: Terrorist attacks closed the exchange through September 14. The exchange also closed exactly a year later to mark the anniversary of the attacks.

October 29 – 30, 2012: The NYSE shut down while Hurricane Sandy battered the Eastern Seaboard. It was the first time a weather event closed the market for two full days in 124 years, after a snowstorm that dumped more than 40 feet of snow closed the exchange in 1888.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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