Opening delayed for 2nd time in 4 months
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has sought details from the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) that faced a four-hour trading disruption, said sources. On Tuesday, the country’s largest commodities bourse was hit by a technical glitch, rekindling concerns among market participants about its trading infrastructure. “Due to a technical issue at the exchange, the commencement of trading on Tuesday, October 28 was delayed. Operations were shifted to the Disaster Recovery (DR) site, and trading resumed at 1:25 pm. All trading systems are now functioning normally,” MCX said in a statement. The exchange has launched an internal investigation into the cause of the issue. Several market participants, however, complained that trading could not be carried out even through the DR site.
MCX shares fell 2 per cent on Tuesday to close at Rs 9,117 apiece.
The sources added that Sebi also questioned senior oicials from the exchange about the glitch. Emailed queries to Sebi remained unanswered until press time. “Such technical issues deteriorate trust in the ecosystem. It is pertinent that the confidence is restored amongst the market participants. MCX must work on the infrastructure so that such an outage does not occur again,” said Rakesh Kumar Jain, president, Commodity Participants Association of India. The association is scheduled to meet the MCX chairperson on Friday to discuss the recurring outages. According to the sources, the latest issues were due to a database problem, and an investigative report from the exchange is expected to be submitted to Sebi by Wednesday. Experts said Sebi seeks a report from the exchange if the delay is of over 45 minutes. Sebi may also consider financial disincentives if the lapse is found significant, particularly for interruptions lasting beyond 75 minutes, they added.