The NASDAQ has been down for about 90 minutes following a "technical glitch."
Reason for the unusual trading halt is unclear. The story so far:
Traders waited nervously Thursday for the Nasdaq to begin trading after its largest intra-day shut in recent memory.
"When everyone comes back online at the same time that's when even more dangerous things can happen in the marketplace," said Sal Arnuk, the co-founder of Themis Trading.
The Wall Street Journal pointed to Apple as a good example of the chaos that could ensue. The tech giant's stock plunged shortly before the Nasdaq glitch.
The Nasdaq earlier halted trading in all securities Thursday until further notice due to a problem affecting quote dissemination.
With the Wall St. casino being a major driver for our economy, such as it is, the ability of NASDAQ and other large exchanges to offer reliable service uptime is very important. More important, obviously, than the ability of employers to offer jobs to actual humans, rather than just keep score for automated trading systems running in the basements of the exchanges themselves.
The financial press is speculating on the impact, with predictions ranging from "minimal" to "chaos." My guess is that, after a short break, the exchange comes back on line and relatively normal trading resumes after a bit of strange market behavior is exhibited.
No news on when American jobs are coming back online and relatively little interest in the financial press on that either.
Update: And it came back, the NASDAQ closing 1% higher than previous close.