(Bloomberg) — A computer malfunction forced Deutsche Boerse AG to suspend trading on its Xetra equities platform for 72 minutes Friday, temporarily stopping investors from taking part in a global rally prompted by new stimulus from Japans central bank.
The technical glitch halted trading in 1,100 stocks from 10:08 a.m. in Frankfurt, freezing activity in members of the benchmark DAX Index such as Siemens AG, SAP AG and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG. We had to restart the system, Deutsche Boerse spokesman Patrick Kalbhenn said in a telephone interview. He said that the exchange has yet to discover the cause of the original technical problems.
The breakdown came amid a global advance in shares after Japans central bank unexpectedly increased its monetary- stimulus program. The MSCI World Index climbed 0.9 percent at 5:44 p.m., extending a four-day gain to 2.4 percent. Xetra trading restarted at 11:20 a.m. with a five-minute auction before prices resumed updating at 11:25 a.m.
When you get unacknowledged and pending orders, you wonder if that could be market data, it could be connectivity, Jason Rand, head of global trading at brokerage and trading- related services company ConvergEx Ltd., said in a phone interview from London. Its very difficult to deduct without more information.
The outage came a day after the New York Stock Exchange was forced to switch to a backup system after a feed carrying price data for thousands of U.S.-listed equities malfunctioned. The 30-minute outage was caused by a network hardware failure at a data center in Mahwah, New Jersey, NYSE said in a statement.
Bond Trading
The malfunction that halted trading in the German market — Europes third largest — also forced Deutsche Boerse to suspend activity on its Eurex Bonds platform and three equity venues that it hosts for exchanges based in other countries.
The operator of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange stopped trading in corporate and government debt for the same 72-minute window, Kalbhenn said. Trading was also halted on the national stock exchanges of Bulgaria, Malta and the Cayman Islands. All three markets run on Xetra platforms hosted in Frankfurt.
Deutsche Boerse also operates the national stock exchanges of Austria, Ireland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. None of these markets were affected.
The Shanghai Stock Exchange, which had closed for the week by the time of the outage in Germany, runs on an earlier version of Deutsche Boerses equity-trading software. The Shanghai bourse developed the code to build its own system.
Deutsche Boerse holds an internal meeting this evening to review what happened to Xetra before the restart. The exchange operator may issue a statement on Nov. 3, setting out its findings.
