July 15, 2016 – The Singapore Exchange (SGX) reopened its securities market per normal today, after a technical glitch caused trading to be suspended for more than half a day yesterday.
Trading was halted before noon yesterday after a technical issue affecting trade confirmation processes was discovered two hours earlier. “A cutover from our primary to secondary trade confirmation systems was initiated at 10.12am. Trade confirmations resumed at 10.14am,” SGX said.
However, missing and duplicate trade confirmation messages were found and at 11.38am, SGX suspended trading and put the market in an “adjust phase”.
An adjust phase allows orders to be placed, removed or amended but no matching takes place. This enables members and investors to review and manage their orders.
“The market was orderly throughout the time it was open,” SGX said.
SGX said trading would resume at 2pm, but later said that would not happen as market reconciliation was still underway. In another update at 3.21pm, the bourse said market would resume trading at 4pm, but again retracted its statement and said the market would remain closed for the rest of the day.
“Challenges in reconciling the missing and duplicate messages resulted in a longer process than expected. SGX decided to close the market for the rest of the day on 14 July 2016 to ensure a fair, orderly and transparent market, having taken into consideration members’ feedback.”
SGX CEO Loh Boon Chye apologised for the market disruption. “Our recovery time has to be better and we must minimise downtime for market participants. I would like to thank our members and participants for working closely with us to resolve the issue.”
Investors can check on the status of their orders with their brokers, SGX said, adding that members of the public can check the exchange’s website for further updates.
SGX has been hit by several glitches in recent years, including a power outage in November 2014 that halted its securities and derivatives markets, and a software error barely a month later which delayed the opening of its securities market. Another power outage in April 2015 forced the exchange to suspend derivatives trading for more than three hours. In August last year, derivatives trading was disrupted again due to a technical fault.