Equities trading on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) has gone dark Thursday, after the venue took preventative steps to restart its systems which had been receiving duplicate trade confirmation messages. Despite an announced restart and resumption of trading at 14:00 local time, the SGX has failed to come back online, leaving investors with no timetable on when trading will resume.
The situation is not unchartered territory for SGX, having incurred a malfunction in its systems framework last year as well, to little material consequence. August 2015 saw a two-hour disruption across its derivatives trading at the hands of a technical fault – the situation was quickly remedied without broader consequence. During the suspension of trading, orders may still be put into the SGX, taken out, or amended, however these will only be matched only when the market reopens.
According to a recent statement from a SGX exchange operator: “Member reconciliation files are being generated and the securities market will not resume trading at 1400 hours. We will advise the market resumption time once member reconciliation is completed.”
Speaking on the halt in a recent statement to Bloomberg, Steven Leung, Executive Director at UOB Kay Hian, Ltd., noted: “It’s not the first time it’s happened in Singapore. Hong Kong may be better -- I don’t remember when Hong Kong had such a suspension because of technical issues -- but people will forget about such events after some time.”
Finance Magnates will update readers as the situation develops.
