New York Stock Exchange outage adds to fears on financial markets

The New York Stock Exchange ground to a halt for nearly four hours Wednesday because of what officials said was a technical glitch, spooking investors and raising new worries about the soundness of the world’s complex financial markets. The nation’s oldest exchange went dark from 11:32 a.m. to 3:10 p.m., its longest computer-related closure to date, freezing orders and redirecting trades through a sprawling network of other exchanges. But the outage, the latest in a series of alarming glitches since the turbulent 2010 “flash crash,” has led to new questions about weaknesses in the technical underpinnings of some of the world’s most critical exchanges. More in the Washington Post here.