Outage Upends an Already Tough Day for Markets 

It was already a tough day in the market when the unexpected hit.

The New York Stock Exchange halted trading late Wednesday morning because of technical trouble.

The outage came as traders had plenty of other things to worry about. Concerns about China’s plunging stock market and a logjam in talks between Greece and its creditors weighed on the mood. Major indexes were already falling before the shutdown, which occurred shortly after 11:30 a.m. Eastern time. NYSE resumed trading at 3:10 p.m.

The broader stock market stayed open as orders to buy and sell kept flowing to the Nasdaq and other exchanges around the country.

By the end of the day, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 34.66 points, or 1.7 percent, to close at 2,046.68.

The Dow Jones industrial average dipped 261.49 points, or 1.5 percent, to 17,515.42 and the Nasdaq slid 87.70 points, or 1.8 percent, to 4,909.76.

In China, the Shanghai Composite sank 6 percent despite new attempts by China’s government to stop the selling. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, a victim of the turmoil in mainland Chinese markets, also lost 6 percent. Beijing ordered state-owned companies to buy shares and promised more credit to finance trading. The Shanghai index has lost almost a third of its value in the last month. It is still up 70 percent over the past year.

In Europe, Greece applied for a new three-year loan and said it would have a new proposal for creditors in the coming days. The deeply indebted country needs a financial lifeline from its European lenders before its banks collapse, an event that could push Greece out of the currency union. The region’s major markets finished with gains.Germany’s DAX gained 0.7 percent and France’s CAC 40 rose 0.8 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.9 percent.

Gold rose $10.90 to $1,163.50 an ounce, and silver added 20 cents to $15.15 an ounce. Copper gained 5 cents to $2.50.

U.S. government bond prices edged up, nudging the yield on the 10-year Treasury down to 2.20 percent from 2.26 late Tuesday. The euro rose to $1.1083, while the dollar fell to 120.78 yen.

The price of oil fell after the Energy Department reported a surprise increase in crude oil supplies for the second straight week. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 68 cents to close at $51.65 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, an international benchmark, rose 20 cents to close at $57.05 in London.

Wholesale gasoline rose 5 cents to close at $1.999 a gallon. Heating oil rose 0.4 cent to close at $1.715 a gallon. Natural gas fell 3.1 cents to close at $2.685 per 1,000 cubic feet.

This article appeared in print on page 10 of the July 9th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.