NYSE glitch causes massive swing in Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares, issue rectified: Report

Berkshire Hathaway class A stock fell nearly 99% on Monday, along with the shares of dozens of other companies, following a technical glitch on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), media reports said.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) later said it is cancelling all erroneous trades in shares of Berkshire Hathaway class A, Nuscale Power, Barrick Gold, Chipotle Mexican Grill and other stocks that were affected by the glitch, reports stated. In total, the exchange was reviewing trades in nearly 40 securities, it said.

Shares of Berkshire Hathaway and Barrick Gold were shown to be down 99.97% and 98.54% at one point, respectively, due to the glitch, before they were corrected, a report said.

The glitch hit the NYSE from 9:50 a.m. to 9:51 a.m. Eastern time. The exchange had also faced an hour-long technical glitch last Thursday which affected the dissemination of real-time data for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes.

The Consolidated Tape Association (CTA) is responsible for the dissemination of real-time data on exchanges and it reported that the glitch occurred due to a new software release at one of its data centres. The glitch was resolved by shifting to a secondary data centre which was running a previous version of the software.

According to a report, the NYSE and CTA also stated that the issue in the software was related to the limit up-limit down bands which are in place to prevent extreme price movements and avoid volatility.

In February 2023, the exchange stated it would reimburse investors after they suffered losses due to a glitch that caused many trades to be nullified.

Following the rectification of the glitch, the class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway traded 0.33% lower in the after-hours market. Shares of Barrick Gold Corp traded 0.06% higher in after-hours trade.