NEW YORK (AP) - It was already a tough day in the market when the unexpected hit.
The New York Stock Exchange halted trading late Wednesday morning because of technical trouble.
The outage came as traders had plenty of other things to worry about. Concerns about China's plunging stock market and a logjam in talks between Greece and its creditors weighed on the mood. Major indexes were already falling before the shutdown, which occurred shortly after 11:30 a.m. Eastern time. NYSE resumed trading at 3:10 p.m.
The exchange didn't say what caused the malfunction but described it as internal and not the result of hackers.
The broader stock market stayed open as orders to buy and sell kept flowing to the Nasdaq and other exchanges around the country.
By the end of the day, the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 34.66 points, or 1.7 percent, to close at 2,046.68.
The Dow Jones industrial average dipped 261.49 points, or 1.5 percent, to 17,515.42 and the Nasdaq slid 87.70 points, or 1.8 percent, to 4,909.76.