Utterly Shambolical As Trading Halts On Bursa Malaysia Keeps Happening!

Trading halt on Bursa Malaysia is becoming a habit.

A nasty of habit and it's really kind of embarrassing.

Let's look back at the chain of happenings since last year.

On 10th March 2008 trading was halted due to limit down ruling.

• Bursa Malaysia halts trading after KLCI falls 10% limit
  
  KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia halted trading at 2.58pm after the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) fell 10%, which is the maximum limit.
  
  Trading will resume at 3.58pm.
  
  The KLCI fell 130.01 points to 1,166.32, the biggest one-day percentage loss in recent years.
  
  Turnover was 913 million shares valued at RM2.47bil. Losers hammered gainers 887 to 19.
  
  Sime Darby fell RM1.90 to RM9.10, KPS lost RM1.74 to RM1.68, DiGi RM1.70 to RM21.30 while BCHB fell RM1.65 to RM8.55.
  
  Other losers were IJM, down RM1.45 to RM5.50, Puncak RM1.36 to RM3.16, Tenaga RM1.25 to RM7.40 and Bursa RM1.05 to RMN8.90

A rather understandable situation given the market sentiments then.

However on 3rd July 2008, the unexpected and the unforgiven happened.

Trading on Bursa Malaysia was halted due to technical glitch. The following news article described what happened then and hardware failure was given as the primary reason why trading was halted.

• Bursa trading suspended due to hardware snag
  
  July 04, 2008
  
  Kuala Lumpur: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi wants immediate action taken to address the technical glitches that led to the suspension of trading in the bourse for the whole day, Thursday.
  
  "This incident will reflect negatively on us. It is very important for Bursa Malaysia to make sure the technical glitches will not recur," he told reporters in Parliament.
  
  Abdullah said he was informed of the incident but no explanation was given.
  
  Asked if there were other reasons for the incident, Abdullah, who is also Finance Minister, said: "I don't see why the technical glitch should happen.
  
  There's no reason for it to happen.
  
  "If we want to take into account in terms of the country's security, we are still safe."
  
  Abdullah said the incident cannot be considered as something that could lead to political instability.
  
  "I don't want any assumptions to be made as it can lead to negative interpretations to market sentiments. What I want to explain here is that the country's peace and security are under control," he added.
  
  Bursa Malaysia Chief Executive Officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff had said he was confident that trading on the market would resume as usual Friday.
  
  He said the exchange had managed to resolve all technical glitches in the trading systems.
  He attributed the problem to the equities trading system experiencing a hardware failure.
  
  "However, the derivatives and bond markets, clearing, settlement and depository system were unaffected," Yusli said.
  
  Yusli also dismissed talks that the suspension was linked to any political development.
  
  Bursa Malaysia had earlier in the day announced that trading would be suspended for the morning and resume at 2.30pm. However, it later retracted the statement and issued another to say that it would not be the case.
  
  At 3.40 pm, the exchange announced that trading would stay suspended until 5pm - the usual time the market closes.
  
  "We tried resuming trade in the afternoon from a primary site but encountered connectivity problems. Only 30 of the 152 sites representing 13 brokers proved operational. We then decided to suspend trading for the rest of the day," Yusli explained.
  
  Yusli said Bursa Malaysia would review all its systems. "We expect to launch a new system in a couple of months. We are in the final stages of launching the system called Bursa Trade Security.
  
  "There is however no exchange in the world that can guarantee its systems would not fail. Still, we will ensure that this does not happen in the future," Yusli added.
  
  The last time Bursa Malaysia experienced a systems failure was in June 2000 when trading was halted for half a day due to a technical problem.
  
  Yusli estimated Thursday's loss based on brokerage fees as at RM450,000 due to the thin trading volume over the past few days.
  
  According to Yusli, 153,000 shares of 15 counters from eight brokers' sites were matched. But as the market was suspended for the whole day, all orders matched were cancelled. As for the indices, Yusli said values for July 2 would apply for the next trading session.
  
  On the issue of compensation Yusli said: "We see this as a trading problem."
  
  Responding to another question as to whether investors would lose confidence in Bursa Malaysia due to the suspension, Yusli said they should focus on the fundamentals. - Bernama.

This should not happen and there is no reason for it to happen!

That was the ORDER given!

Come December 2008, Bursa gave everyone an early Christmas present with yet another trading halt again!!!

No joke.

• Glitch in Bursa afternoon trading speedily rectified
  
  Tuesday December 23, 2008
  Glitch in Bursa afternoon trading speedily rectified
  By EDY SARIF
  
  PETALING JAYA: Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd managed to rectify a technical problem which delayed briefly the afternoon session trading on the local bourse yesterday “in a timely manner with minimal trading disruption.”
  
  Chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff said they were able to identify the cause and resolved the problem “expeditiously and commenced with the pre-opening phase at 2.50pm.”
  
  “Our priority remains in monitoring the system vigilantly and in ensuring there is minimal disruption to trading,” he said in a statement.
  
  Bursa Malaysia, in the same statement, said “in order to preserve a fair and orderly market, it decided to halt the securities market at the beginning of the afternoon trading session.”
  
  The stock exchange operator said it “identified an issue with an application module” which resulted in the system rejecting orders keyed in by brokers during the pre-opening phase of the afternoon trading session.
  
  However, the derivatives market was unaffected and continued to trade as normal.
  
  A remisier said the technical glitch resulted in orders from clients being halted for a while.
  
  “Orders couldn’t go through for about half an hour to 45 minutes when the market opened in the afternoon. However, we are lucky as the problem was not encountered for too long,” he said.
  
  HLG Securities Sdn Bhd remisier Muhammadi Omar said the technical problem resulted in clients losing the chance to sell their stocks when prices were good.
  
  “Before lunch time, the market was doing good as prices were really attractive. However, due to the disruption, clients who wanted to sell their stocks when the market opened in the afternoon couldn’t do so,” he said.
  
  The Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange closed at 873.43 points yesterday, down 2.97 points.

Speedily rectified?

• Thursday December 25, 2008
  Technical glitch holds up trading again
  By EDY SARIF
  
  PETALING JAYA: Trading at the new Bursa Trade Securities was suspended again yesterday afternoon for about 45 minutes due to a technical issue.
  
  The new platform that was launched early this month encountered the same technical glitch that it faced on Monday.
  
  A statement from Bursa Malaysia said the system rejected orders keyed in by the brokers during the pre-opening phase of the afternoon trading session.
  
  However, the derivatives market was unaffected.
  
  “This is due to the application module for the pre-opening phase. A software patch is currently being developed by the trading system vendor, NYSE Euronext Advanced Trading Solution (NYXT), and is targeted for implementation by the end of this week,” it said.
  
  Chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff said its priority remained in ensuring there was minimal disruption to trading.
  
  “We are still waiting for NYXT to come back to us with the software patch. As a stop-gap measure, our internal team put in place a work-around process which enabled us to get trading up and running within the hour on Monday and today (yesterday),” he said.
  
  He added that there was a possibility the problem would recur until the software patch had been deployed.
  
  If this happened, he said, it expected its work-around process to again get the system up and running.
  
  A remisier said the problem had resulted in orders not keyed in for his clients.
  
  Another remisier said nothing much could be done except to wait for the system to be available again.
  
  “This is the second time I’m facing this kind of problem this week. It gives a bad impression not just to us, but to investors and people who are involved in trading,” he said, adding that it was fortunate that the market was quite quiet with thin trading volume.

Chains of habit are sure difficult to break and true enough it happened yet again yesterday!!!!!!!

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• FTSE glitch disrupts Bursa trading for half an hour
  
  STOCK exchange operator Bursa Malaysia Bhd (1818) said "a disruption to real-time index feed from FTSE" yesterday has forced it to halt trading on the stock and derivatives markets for about half an hour.
  
  The problem has affected the dissemination of data by the exchange, Bursa Malaysia said in a statement yesterday.
  
  "I don't think it's a major problem. Luckily it happened on a day when trading liquidity was quite low," Maybank Investment Bank Bhd's head of research Vincent Khoo said.
  
  The technical glitch was the fourth that Bursa Malaysia had faced since it put in a new trading system in December.
  
  Trading on the bourse was disrupted twice in a week on December 22 and 24 last year, and again on January 2 when the pre-opening session was delayed by about 18 minutes.
  Even before the new trading platform was adopted, an embarrassing system failure last July had led to a full-day trading suspension, spurring unnecessary rumours of sabotage since the market was expected to fall sharply on that particular day.
  
  Yesterday, trading was suspended after Bursa Malaysia was unable to process an information message arising from a disruption to real-time index feed from FTSE.
  
  The exchange had decided to halt all trades from 12.19pm, shortly before the lunch break, to maintain a fair and orderly market although trades and orders were not affected. The glitch also delayed the pre-opening session by 20 minutes before trading resumed for the afternoon session.
  
  "Our priority is to ensure that the market operates in a fair and orderly manner and there is minimal disruption to trading," Bursa Malaysia's chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff said.
  
  Trading will start as normal today.
  
  However, all FBM indices will not be available via Bursa Malaysia until it has confirmed that the information message processing is in order.

Utterly shambolic!

There is simply no reason for this to be happening so frequently.

It's totally embarrassing to say the least as these trading halts gives an extremely bad impression on OUR stock exchange.

It does not appear to me that the folks in charge of Bursa Malaysia knows how to run a stock exchange at all.

Sigh!