News reports out of Australia today say that the problem that shut down the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) today for four hours has now been resolved.
According to the IBTimes, about 5 minutes after the ASX opened at 1000 local time, the ASX was shut down due to a "technical fault" with its trading platform. However, this evening local time, ASX sent out a press release (PDF) stating:
"The market was halted due to a network connectivity issue that prevented participants from interacting with the trading platform."
ASX also said trading activity should be normal tomorrow. Trading soared once the system was restored at 1400 local time, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Traders were frustrated with the outage - the second one this year - because they were very anxious to trade on the news of (yet another) agreement by EU leaders to address the debt crisis there.
Next Monday, the first-foreign owned stock market competitor to ASX called Chi-X Australia is being launched. One couldn't ask for better timing, at least from Chi-X's perspective.
Robert N. Charette is a Contributing Editor to IEEE Spectrum and an acknowledged international authority on information technology and systems risk management. A self-described “risk ecologist,” he is interested in the intersections of business, political, technological, and societal risks. Charette is an award-winning author of multiple books and numerous articles on the subjects of risk management, project and program management, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, Charette was a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award in 2008.
