Technical Glitch Shuts 5 N.Y. Futures Markets

NEW YORK — The five New York futures and options markets shut down early on Friday after a communications glitch prevented thousands of traders, brokers and investors from receiving price data.

Action in the nation’s major oil and metals trading pits came to a standstill when the exchanges discovered that no price quotes were leaving the building.

Exchanges employees and participants said it was the first time in recent memory that the markets were closed because of a technical problem. Traders reported no panic and an orderly shutdown. Some players took an early weekend. Trading was halted at 11:20 a.m. at the New York Commodity Exchange, the nation’s main metals market; the New York Mercantile Exchange, the main oil trading market; the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange; the Cotton Exchange, and the New York Futures Exchange.

The problem involved communication lines inside the exchange at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and prevented price quotations from being transferred from the trading floor to computer screens in the outside world.

“The high-speed futures line is dead,” Tom Crisalli, an operations employee with the Commodity Exchange Center, which oversees the five futures markets, said early Friday afternoon.

Failing to resolve the problem, the exchanges shut down at 2 p.m. after giving traders a few minutes to settle pending deals. The regular closing times for most commodities run from 2:20 p.m. until around 3 p.m. The New York Stock Exchange composite index-futures contract continued to trade until its normal 4:15 p.m. close.

Employees said the system began transmitting data again at 2:49 p.m. Officials said the exchanges would reopen Monday. But the exact cause of the glitch remained unclear.