Power Outage Brings Big Board’s Trading to Halt for 24 Minutes

A power outage, possibly caused by a faulty switch, halted New York Stock Exchange trading for 24 minutes Tuesday morning.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up a modest 4 points when trading stopped at 10:21 a.m. It resumed at 10:45 a.m.

The exchange said there was no damage to its systems hardware and that no trading orders were lost during the outage.

“We’re not being more specific at this point than a power failure,” a spokeswoman for the Big Board said.

Computers on the exchange floor did not function during the outage, and electronic price quotes were disrupted.

The problem did not affect lights.

Consolidated Edison of New York said the outage may have been related to a severe voltage dip at the utility’s East 13th Street station shortly after 10 a.m.

It was the latest in a series of computer or power problems to hit stock trading in New York.

The nearby American Stock Exchange said its operations were unaffected except for options on NYSE stocks, which are traded on the American Exchange. The NASDAQ over-the-counter market said its system operated normally.