A software malfunction shut down trading on the NASDAQ for three hours this afternoon, but it was not enough to shake investors.
The exchange re-opened at 3:25 with stocks near the same prices and rose in the final half hour of trading to close up 1.08%.
“It’s not the flash crash,” Stifel’s chairman and chief executive officer, Ron Kruszewski, remarked. “I don’t think it's going to be that big of a deal.”
It was generally business as usual for the firm’s wealth management division, which has around 2,000 advisors. There was some question about what would happen to open orders, but the NASDAQ allowed investors to cancel any pending transactions prior to the exchange’s reopening.
Kruszewski, who has been vocal about the dangers of relying on technology in a push for faster trades, said that today's pause is more of a “gentle reminder that market structure still needs to be addressed.”
“On one hand, our systems need to work 100% of the time and we need to continue to look at speed and electronics versus reliability,” he said. “On the other hand this does not appear to be that big of an event.”
