Trading on the Moscow Exchange was suspended starting from 15:00 local time (13:00 GMT). The company shared in an announcement that the trading session was suspended due to a technical problem related to the network.
The list of affected markets extends to equities and bonds, FX, derivatives and money markets. This is not the first time the Moscow Exchange has experienced technical issues within the past year.
Back in March, trading on the foreign exchange market was halted for over an hour. A malfunction in the operation of gateways used to access the FX market's trading system lead to a stop of precious metals trading.
Last year, equity and bond markets were frozen for almost two hours. A systemic failure was triggered by a fund transfer transaction. At the time the foreign exchange and derivatives markets remained unaffected.
The company has switched operations to its backup systems after the technical issue was identified and trading resumed.
Trading on the main market of Moscow Exchange resumed at 16:50 local time (13:50 GMT), whilst the derivatives, FX and precious metals markets resumed operations at 17:00 (14:00 GMT).
The reliability of trading systems has been questioned by regulators and traders in recent years, especially after the rapid expansion of high-frequency trading (HFT). The May 2010 stock market “flash crash” has focused the attention of many market participants on some order Execution issues which ultimately led to the latest publication of bestselling author Michael Lewis, “Flash Boys”.
