Investing.com -- U.S. stocks closed broadly lower on Wednesday as trading resumed on the New York Stock Exchange in the final hour before the close, after a technical glitch triggered a three and a half hour delay.
The NYSE halted trading of all securities at 11:32 a.m. as officials cancelled all open orders at the time of the suspension. As officials worked feverishly to correct the network malfunction, the world's largest stock exchange took to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) to allay any concerns that the delay stemmed from a comprehensive cyber breach. At the time of the halt, stocks on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down roughly 218 points on the session.
"Around mid-morning we started to see some concerns about the way trading was occurring, customers weren't getting all the messages back that you would otherwise expect," New York Stock Exchange president Tom Farley told CNBC. "It was a technical error, it looks like a configuration problem."
The suspension came hours after thousands of United Continental Holdings Inc (NYSE:UAL) passengers were grounded on Wednesday morning, when the major U.S. airlines carrier suffered a separate technical breakdown. An issue with a router degraded network connectivity for the airlines' various applications, causing an operational disruption, a United Airlines spokesperson said in a statement. Officials from The White House, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission quickly confirmed that the disruptions were unrelated and were not caused by a cyber breach.
Minutes before trading on the NYSE resumed at 3:10 EST, the Dow was down 232.04 or 1.31%, above session-lows of approximately 270 points during the outage. Trading of NYSE securities on other platforms continued while the exchange remained closed. For the session, the NASDAQ Composite index and S&P 500 Composite were also each down by more than 1.3% in the minutes before NYSE trading resumed.
After a modest rally when the NYSE reopened, the major indices closed slightly lower amid a late sell-off. The Dow closed down 261.49 or 1.47% to 17,515.42, while the NASDAQ lost 87.70 or 1.75% to 4,909.76.
The S&P 500, meanwhile, fell 34.65 or 1.66% to 2,046.69, as stocks in all 10 sectors closed in the red. Stocks in the Basic Materials, Energy and Telecommunication industries lagged, each falling by more than 2% on the session.
All 30 components on the Dow closed the session in the red. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) ended the session as its top performer, even after losing 0.06 or 0.14% to 44.24. The worst performer was Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), which plunged 3.12 or 2.48% to 122.57.
The biggest gainer on the NASDAQ was Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ:SYMC), which rose 0.03 or 0.13 to 22.82. The worst performer on the NASDAQ was Wynn Resorts Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN), which tumbled 7.21 or 6.48% to 104.14.
On the S&P 500, Hasbro Inc (NASDAQ:HAS) finished as the top performer after gaining 0.89 or 1.17% to 77.05. The worst performer was Delphi Automotive, which fell 5.81 or 6.91% to 78.23.
Meanwhile, yields on U.S. 10-Year Treasuries fell slightly by two basis points to 2.201%, less than an hour after the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its June FOMC meeting. While the FOMC appeared to take a relatively dovish position on the timing of its first interest rate hike in nearly a decade, one Fed governor voted in favor of a June lift-off. Earlier, yields reached an intraday high of 2.256% ahead of the release.
Volatility in the Chinese economy continued to weigh, as the Shanghai Composite Index plunged 5.9% to 3,507.19. In total, trading was halted on more than 1,330 companies during the session following further efforts from the People's Bank of China to stimulate Chinese equities markets. Over the last month, Chinese stocks have plunged roughly 30% amid the slowest economic growth in the nation in more than a decade.