U.S. stocks ended lower Wednesday as trading resumed on the New York Stock Exchange following an outage of more than three hours caused by an unspecified technical problem.
The NYSE's troubles didn't extend to the dozens of other exchanges that also trade U.S. stocks, such as the Nasdaq, so investors were still able to buy and sell stocks easily.
The NYSE didn't say what the problem was but described it as internal and not the result of a breach of its systems. Trading stopped at about 11:30 a.m. Eastern at resumed at 3:10 p.m. Eastern.
For the day:
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 261.49 points, or 1.5 percent, to 17,515.42.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 34.65 points, or 1.7 percent, to 2,046.69.
The Nasdaq composite dropped 87.70 points, or 1.8 percent, to 4,909.76.
For the week:
The Dow is down 214.69 points, or 1.2 percent.
The S&P 500 index is down 30.09 points, or 1.5 percent.
The Nasdaq is down 99.45 points, or 2 percent.
For the year:
The Dow is down 307.65 points, or 1.7 percent.
The S&P 500 index is down 12.21 points, or 0.6 percent.
The Nasdaq is up 173.71 points, or 3.7 percent.
Shares