Singapore Exchange suspends securities trading after another technical glitch

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) suspended securities trading for most of Thursday (July 14) after a technical glitch resulted in duplicate messages being generated.

Following multiple announcements stating trading was expected to resume in the afternoon, the system remained down for the rest of the day. SGX did not confirm if the market would reopen tomorrow.

In its first statement, the exchange revealed its securities market "temporarily ceased trading" at 1138am local time, noting that orders could be put in, taken out or amended during the period the market was closed. "Orders will be matched only when the market reopens," it said. "Please check with your brokers for the status of your orders."

In four subsequent statements issued in the afternoon, SGX explained that a technical glitch had resulted in duplicate trade confirmation messages being generated, but assured that "no duplicate trades were executed and the market remained orderly". It then added that the market was expected to resume trading at 2pm. This, though, did not materialise.

It later released another statement to say trading would resume at 4pm and reopen the next day, and further confirmed the accuracy of order and trade executions. In its final statement for the day, however, it noted that the securities market would remain shut for the rest of the day.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said it had been notified and was "monitoring the situation closely", reported national broadcaster Channel NewsAsia.

According to the report, today's incident was the latest in a string of interruptions to hit SGX, including an outage in April last year that resulted in the suspension of derivatives trading for more than three hours. Another episode in November 2014 brought trading on its securities and derivatives markets to a halt.