ASX re-opens after four-hour outage

UPDATE 4pm: The ASX resumed trading at 2pm local time (4pm NZ time) following an outage that began at 10.05am local time (12.05pm NZ time).

UPDATE 3.05pm: Anger is mounting as the ASX failure enters its third hour. 

With all trading suspended, brokers and investors have been unable to react to a string of major developments, including news of a European Union deal that has seen banks agree to take 50% losses on Greek bonds, Woolworths earnings, a record NAB profit and word that Foxtel's $A2 billion bid for Austar should be finalised in early 2012.

The ASX says trading should resume at 2pm local time (4pm NZ time), following a 20-minute "pre-open" phase.

Dual-listed stocks, such as Telstra, can be traded on the NZX when the ASX is down. However, an NZX spokeswoman told NBR there was no uptick in trading that could be attributed to the outage.

All trading on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has been suspended while a computer glitch is investigated.

An ASX spokeswoman told NBR the “technical issue”, which involved information on trades not being updated, was discovered just minutes after the ASX opened at 10am (12pm New Zealand time). Just 6700 trades had been processed. All trades have been allowed to stand following a review. 

The exchange has gone into “inquire” mode, the spokeswoman said, which involved a total halt on all trading until the issue was resolved.

All ASX trading was suspended at 10.05am local time (12.05pm NZ time). The exchange was still down as of 1pm (3pm NZ time).

There is no estimated time for the exchange to come back online, the spokeswoman said.

The index was down 0.3 of a point to 4242.2 when trading was suspended.

The outage comes at a bad time for the ASX. Rival exchange Chi-X Australia - whose equity backer include Nomura's Instinet, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America's Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley  - is due to launch next Monday, breaking the ASX's long-time monopoly.

The ASX claims to be the world's 8th largest stock exchange, with a $1.3 trillion market cap and average daily trading that tops $A5 billion.

Since November last year, the ASX has been run on a trading platform outsourced from US exchange Nasdaq.

Dual-listed stocks can be traded on NZX
NZX chief executive Mark Weldon told NBR that ASX-NZX dual listed stocks could still trade on the New Zealand exchange - whether they were NZ-based, or Australian-domiciled companies such as Telstra.

Mr Weldon said the ability to maintain price formation during such an incident was a key benefit of beinig dual-listed.

It was too early to tell if the NZX was seeing an uptick in activity, the NZX boss said.

But if the ASX remained closed for another two or three hours, or announced it was closing for the rest of the day, he expected a substantial increase in NZX trades.

Mr Weldon noted today's suspension was the ASX's third outage in 12 months.

On February 28, a trade confirmation glitch saw ASX trading suspended mid-afternoon, and the exchange close for the day before the problem was resolved.

Mr Weldon said ASX problems were, increasing in frequency, while the NZX had not lost a second's trading in five years.

"Touch wood," the NZX boss added.