Due to a technical issue, the stock price of Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares experienced a sudden drop of 99.97%. The NYSE stated that all trades caused by this technical issue are considered invalid.
An email showed that the New York Stock Exchange and other UTP exchanges decided to cancel all error trades related to CTA SIP quoting issues by Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A.N) that occurred between 9:50am and 9:51am Eastern Time in the United States (9:50pm to 9:51pm Beijing time) if the price is less than or equal to $603,718.30 per share. Previously, Berkshire Hathaway fell from $620,000 per share to $185.1 per share, a drop of 99.97%, and about 50 shares were traded during this time.
In addition to Berkshire Hathaway, there were about 40 stocks that were halted due to a software update failure, including Barrick Gold and NuScale Power. About 45 minutes later, the Consolidated Tape Association, operated by a subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange, restored the system to a backup data center running different software versions, resolving the interruption incident. This was also the third interruption incident to occur in the US market in the past week.
The sudden interruption did not affect stocks listed on the Nasdaq, and the impact on the overall market was minimal. However, the market was adapting to the T+1 settlement mechanism at the time of the incident. A failure last Thursday caused the S&P 500 index to not give real-time quotes for more than an hour.
Steve Sosnick, Chief Strategist at Interactive Brokers, said, "It's a bit strange, but there's little doubt that it's a coincidence. We're used to a lot of normal operating time without exchange accidents, so it's worth paying attention when there are several failures in a row."
"I think those bad trades will be broken," said Jonathan Corpina, Senior Managing Partner at Meridian Equity Partners. "What I'm more curious about is how did this happen? I know what happened, but I want to know how it happened?"
US stock trading is executed by more than ten exchanges, and all buy and sell instructions are integrated through data feeds distributed around the world. The New York Stock Exchange is owned and operated by Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., which has multiple exchanges including NYSE Arca and NYSE American.
These disturbances remind people of a chaotic event in January 2023, when a staff member at the backup data center of the New York Stock Exchange in Chicago made an error while running the backup system, causing violent price fluctuations in hundreds of stocks at the market open.
Dave Lutz, head of ETFs at JonesTrading, said in a message, "Coincidence or not, this is certainly the second trading day in the past three that has caused a lot of confusion."