Australian Stock Exchange closed early after ongoing technical issues

THE Australian Stock Exchange has closed early today, after fully trading for just under an hour amid ongoing technical issues.

Trading on the Australian share market has been delayed

THE Australian share market may have foregone up to $3.5 billion in turnover after a series of technical issues and errors disrupted and ultimately halted trading on the first day of the week.

The ASX announced it would close the exchange at 3.37pm AEST on Monday with all shares only able to be traded for just 57 minutes.

The exchange operator initially delayed opening by an hour and a half until 11.30am AEST due a technical issue with a function that allows it to manage individual shares on its Nasdaq OMX equity trading platform.

The ASX then reported operational errors made it necessary to cancel all transactions made in a 43 second window during market pre-opening at 11.10am AEST. CommSec market analyst Steven Daghlian said due to the delays and uncertainty only about $1.2 billion worth of shares were traded during the day, which was 20 per cent of the share value traded the previous Monday.

“It’s been interrupted trade throughout the day so that’s kept the value and volume very light today,” he said.

“From the ASX200 as an index, it’s just below 5,300 points still. So it’s been pretty quiet overall. If we look at the actual percentage moves so far we’re pretty flat and the market is still pretty close to its worst levels in 10 weeks.

“This is week six now that the market is in the red.” ASX was unable to comment on the cost of the delays or the loss in overall turnover, but said average daily turnover this year had been about $4.6 billion. CMC Markets chief market analyst Ric Spooner doubted traders would have lost that much because there was no market moving news on Monday morning. “There are two drivers of how business might be lost, one is how long the market was closed for and secondly is what news has happened during the period it has been closed,” he told AAP.

“I’d say not a great deal has happened this morning, but we’ll never know.” Competitor exchange Chi-X also delayed its opening until 11:30 AEST, but was able to conduct normal trade for the rest of the day.

Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison said dealing with technical issues was a normal thing for companies in any advanced economy.

“It is one of the issues of dealing in a 21st century economy. We are more reliant on these systems than we ever have been,” he told reporters. The ASX said it would update the market about the issues before exchange opened on Tuesday morning.

Share trading on the ASX has been down due to a technical glitch.

At noon AEST the benchmark ASX/S&P200 was down 0.37 per cent, after the delayed start to trading.

Earlier, at 10.10am AEST, the broader All Ordinaries index was also unchanged at 5,396.7.

The ASX 24 the share price futures index contract was down seven points at 5,268, with 7,238 contracts traded.

OptionsXpress market analyst Ben Le Brun said that while the delay affected volumes, the overall market’s movement lower was influenced by lower oil prices and weak leads from Wall Street.

“The ASX delay has not had much to do with the overall price action except for being very inconvenient,” he said.

“There’s selling across the board with the energy, materials, healthcare and financials all lower.” He said resource and energy stocks were under pressure because global oil prices had fallen on continued concerns about an oversupply, while other commodity prices were either lower or unchanged.

Investor concern in the lead-up to the Bank of Japan and the US Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee’s separate interest rate meetings later this week was also dragging on the market, he said.

“We are in the hands of the central bank gods.” On the local bourse, the banks were mostly lower at 12.02pm AEST, with ANZ bucking the trend to rise nine cents, or 0.34 per cent, to $26.45.

Westpac was down 33.5 cents, or 1.13 per cent, at $29.255, while National Australia Bank fell five cents, or 0.18 per cent, to $27.01 and Commonwealth Bank was down 30 cents, or 0.42 per cent, at $71.91.

The major oil and gas players were also mixed with Santos up 10 cents, or 2.87 per cent, at $3.58, while Woodside Petroleum fell 38 cents, or 1.39 per cent, to $27.05.

The two big miners, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, were lower, losing 0.7 per cent and 0.86 per cent, to $19.95 and $46.20, respectively.

Meanwhile, Newcrest Mining has agreed to sell its 50 per cent stake in the Hidden Valley joint venture, including a mine in Papua New Guinea, to its partner Harmony Gold Mining.

Shares in the gold miner were up 53 cents, or 2.51 per cent, to $21.65.