Trading in Australian stocks suspended for second time

Trading in Australian stocks was suspended for a second time on Monday after starting more than an hour late because of a technical glitch, with investors unable to buy and sell shares as they braced for US and Japanese central bank meetings this week. ASX Ltd said it was working to fix the problem.

The stock-exchange operator delayed the normal 10am local time equity market opening until 11.30am due to an issue relating to a component that allows it to manage individual stocks, Matthew Gibbs, a spokesman for the ASX in Sydney, said earlier. He added that the company was working with its technology vendor, Nasdaq Inc, to prevent a recurrence.

Policy meetings

The issue comes at an inconvenient time for investors and traders assessing their positions, with policy meetings scheduled at the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve this week, and Australia's central bank set to release minutes from its most recent meeting on Tuesday.

Australia’s equity market is worth $1.1 trillion, making it the sixth-largest in the Asia-Pacific region.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” said Niv Dagan, the Melbourne-based executive director at Peak Asset Management LLC. “It’s frustrating because they said they’d fixed it. We’d hope the ASX sorts things out by tomorrow to allow traders to exit positions before the Fed meeting. You’ve got traders and fund managers looking to change their portfolios before that, and unfortunately they can’t do that.”

Chi-X Australia Pty, which operates a competing stock-trading system, had to delay its usual open due to the ASX glitch, said chief executive John Fildes. – (Bloomberg)