The New York Stock Exchange has agreed to pay $9 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations over a January 2023 market outage that caused widespread trading chaos. The SEC accused NYSE of internal system failures that led to botched market openings and extreme price swings in major companies including Wells Fargo, McDonald's, Walmart, and Morgan Stanley.

On January 24, 2023, NYSE experienced technical glitches that prevented proper opening auctions for over 2,800 securities. The malfunction triggered price-triggered trading restrictions, market-wide pauses in 84 securities, and thousands of canceled trades. The exchange's systems failed to conduct the standard opening auction process, instead initiating continuous trading due to what the SEC called a "critical systems disruption."

NYSE, owned by Intercontinental Exchange Inc., agreed to the settlement without admitting wrongdoing. The exchange had already compensated affected market participants and enhanced its procedures following the incident. The SEC also cited NYSE for failing to establish written policies to monitor systems supporting its opening auctions, emphasizing that exchanges must operate in compliance with their own rules.