Trading abruptly halted today afternoon on Frankfurt stock exchange and several other related markets after the company suspended the exchanges due to what it says were technical issues.
The exchange operator informed market participants via a statement that it was experiencing a “technical problem” and “failure” with Deutsche Boerse’s Xetra and Eurex platforms.
The trading halts lasted for more than four hours, resulting in the shutdown of the bulk of its derivatives and share trading, though floor trading was not affected.
The glitch has been felt across Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and in Balkan countries before it resumed on both Eurex share and the Xetra derivatives platforms at around 1150 GMT. It came amid another day of volatility and sharp moves on fears of the novel coronavirus’s effect on global economic growth.
In a statement late on Tuesday, the stock exchange operator blamed a malfunction in the internal communication of the trading system for the outage, adding that the incident was not the result of a cyber attack.
Exchange to unbundle Xetra and Eurex
Earlier this year, Eurex’s long-serving Andreas Mitschke has taken over as Head of the Trading Surveillance Office (TSO) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and the derivatives exchange Eurex. At the time, the exchange said that one of the most important tasks that Mitschke will be responsible for is to reverse the combined supervision of Xetra and Eurex, two of the largest venues for the trading of equities and exchange-traded funds in Europe.
This may come after Deutsche Boerse’s platforms experienced disruptions due to technical problems over the last year. As such, the new head will work to ensure issues that impacted Xetra and Eurex don’t spill into the exchange’s main Trading Platform .
The move also comes at a time when Deutsche Boerse is battling to attract any clearing business that is forced out of London after the Brexit .
Concerns over the global spread of the coronavirus outbreak have led to a surge in market activity, which pushed Frankfurt trading volumes to a record of $329 billion in March.
During the market turbulence, other platforms that cater to retail investors have also experienced difficulties, resulting in clients getting kept out of the market during sensitive times. Robinhood, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, experienced trading downtime amid heavy trading volumes, before managing to restore its systems.
Two trading platform also failed at JPMorgan Chase & Co, including one that caters to wealth-management clients when the financial markets were in chaos last month.
