On Wednesday, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) halted trading in the morning hours, following a glitch that froze stock prices. Trading came to a grinding halt at 11:40 am with traders and investors taking to social media to discuss the technical snag. Four hours later, India’s largest stock exchange reopened for extended trading from 3.45 pm to 5 pm.
In the recent past, NSE faced technical glitches in June 2020 when its bank option segment prices did not reflect on the terminal linked to the exchange. Before that, in September 2019, the bourse’s system suffered a trading outage towards the final minutes.
Such glitches have been reported from various other parts of the world too. Here, we take a look at some of them:
Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), November 16, 2020
The Australian Stock Exchange closed early due to a glitch after upgrades went live. This was the bourse’s worst outage since 2016. Trade began at 10 am local time, and at 10.24 am trading was halted. In the afternoon, the market said it would close for the rest of the day. It occurred while ASX was debuting its updated trading system with Nasdaq. The shutdown was the longest in over a decade for the ASX.
Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), October 2, 2020
The TSE shut down for an entire day, in its worst outage for 21 years. At 9 am local time, the TSE announced the shutdown and soon added that trading would remain suspended for the rest of the day. Japan Exchange Group, which operates TSE, said the shutdown was due to faulty hardware responsible for relaying market information. When the hardware failed, a backup failed to take its place.
Deutsche Börse Xetra, July 1, 2020
Germany’s electronic trading platform Xetra had to undergo a nearly three-hour outage. Trading was halted across Central Europe when exchange operator Deutsche Boerse’s T7 system, on which Xetra cash stock relies, was down due to a technical glitch. Trading in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Ljubljana and Zagreb was also down. Before that, in April 2020, a similar outage had hobbled trading across Central European stock markets.
London Stock Exchange, August 16, 2019
This was the worst outage for the London stock market since 2011. A systems failure prevented trading in the shares of Britain’s biggest companies for over an hour and a half. Trading was due to begin at 8 am local time, but traders were left in limbo till 9.40 am as technical staff battled to solve the problem. The exchange didn’t reveal exactly what went wrong but just blamed “a technical software issue”.
New York Stock Exchange, April 25, 2018
Trading was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange in five stocks, including Amazon and Alphabet, for the rest of the day due to a technical glitch. The exchange said the suspension was due to a “price scale code” issue and any open orders in those securities would be cancelled. Apart from Amazon and both Alphabet, the other affected stocks were Booking Holdings, Zion Oil and Gas Equity Warrants.
New York Stock Exchange, July 8, 2015
Trading in all securities was halted after the exchange experienced a major technical glitch. The halt began at 11:32 am ET and stayed down for nearly four hours. Trading resumed at 3:10 pm ET. In an announcement, NYSE said that it was experiencing an internal technical issue and added that the glitch was not a result of a cyber breach.
London Stock Exchange, September 9, 2008
Trading was suspended for most of the day due to a computer glitch. This prevented traders from taking part in a worldwide stock market rally that followed the US government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant mortgage companies. Just an hour after the market opened, traders complained that they were unable to see prices or buy and sell shares. Trading resumed seven hours later, leaving just half an hour before the market closed for the day.
(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)
