Share Market Update: Trade Resumes At NSE After Almost 4-Hour Halt Due To Glitch

National Stock Exchange (NSE) resumes regular trading. Earlier, NSE said all the segments were closed at 11:40 am and assured that they will be restored as soon as the issue is resolved. Investors and traders took on social media platforms to talk about a technical snag in one of the world's largest exchanges.

National Stock Exchange (NSE), outside its building in Mumbai | Getty

National Stock Exchange (NSE) resumed regular trading at 3.45 pm and both the Bombay Stock Exchange and the NSE decided to extend the trading time until 5 p.m. on Wednesday. According to an NSE notification, futures and options (F&O) and normal market operations resume at 3.45 pm and will close at 5 pm.

"BSE equity and equity derivatives markets will remain open till 5 pm today as decided jointly between exchanges today. All other markets timings will remain as normal," BSE said in a statement. On resumption, Nifty was trading up 263 points at 14,971, while BSE Sensex was up 1063 points at 50,814. 

Earlier, trading halted on NSE India, the country's largest multi-asset exchange, at 11.40 am on Wednesday after the index price feed for several indices froze for several brokers. The trading had to be halted in the Futures & Options Market at 11:40 am, and the cash market was stopped at 11:43 am.

"NSE has multiple telecom links with two service providers to ensure redundancy. We have received communication from both the telecom service providers that there are issues with their links due to which there is an impact on the NSE system," said the exchange in a statement.

"There is an issue with live ticks for NSE indices (Nifty 50, Nifty Bank, and others) across brokers. We are in touch with NSE to have this fixed," said discount brokerage firm  Zerodha in a tweet.

It may be noted that a similar trade disruption occurred in July 2017, when the NSE halted both the cash and derivatives segments due to technical issues. When trading resumed that day, however, the session was not extended.

After trading was halted at the NSE, BSE, which claims to be the World's Fastest Exchange, with a speed of 6 microseconds in a tweet, said, "BSE continues to have normal trading in all segments today."

Jimeet Modi, CEO, and Founder, Samco Ventures, said, "NSE halted trading and No news on re-opening. To avoid systemic issues, NSE must consider two options: In case they are unable to reopen before 3:30, they should extend the time for the orderly closure of open positions; If no extension, then all trades must be annulled. The markets must be given at least one hour of trading to deal with all open positions or trades."

There is one precedent of the complete annulment of trades on Muhurat trading day on the BSE F&O segment in 2011.

"The ideal situation is NSE is able to fix issues and reopen in time. Else it's time to consider alternatives such as extension or annulment. The biggest question in this issue is why the entire market was shut just because index feeds were not refreshing? Feeds for underlying contracts were fine, and so was order matching, so why shut down the entire market?" asked Jimeet Modi.