The operator of the Hong Kong stock exchange has completed its preliminary investigations into the outage that disrupted trading for futures and options contracts.
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), which suspended trading derivatives yesterday, said in an update on its website that the issues were «caused by software issues in the vendor-supplied trading system,» but did not provide details about when it would resume.
HKEX suspended trading in the afternoon and after-hours sessions of its derivatives market at 2 p.m. on Thursday afternoon after prolonged connectivity issues. The clearing system for derivatives was open for the afternoon session only, while other markets continued normal operations.
Not Cyberattack
Legislative Council member, Christopher Cheung Wah-fung, who represents the financial services industry, ruled out a cyberattack and said the disruption was caused by «too many transaction orders being input to the system,» the newspaper reported.
According to the «South China Morning Post,» many traders were unable to place orders on the trading system when the market opened for business at 9.30 a.m., leading to a fall in trading volumes by about 70 percent before the suspension. The number of futures and options contracts totaled 63,381 yesterday, 95 percent lower than the daily turnover of 1.2 million contracts per day in August.
