The JSE`s link to London, from where its systems are run, was down for almost three hours this morning, resulting in a fevered attempt to make up for lost time in afternoon trading.
"We had a problem this morning with two links," says Russell Loubser, president of the JSE. "These have now been resolved and we are trying to find out what the cause of the problem was. People were unable to re-request messages, which is part of the trading process, so they couldn`t confirm their order books. Without being able to do that, we didn`t want to reopen the market, because it would not have been an orderly market. We kept the market as an open auction market until 11.45am."
Although trading time has been lost, it seems JSE members are reluctant to extend the day`s trading hours. "At the moment, members are of the view that they can get all their trades in during the remaining hours of the day," says Loubser. "We are still talking to them and determining exactly what the members want."
Greg Potter, a trader at Nedcor Securities, points out that in situations like this member organisations are generally unwilling to extend working hours for logistical reasons. "In the past when these occurrences have happened, the institutions don`t look favourably on the extending of working hours," he says. "It makes it difficult to bring closing reports on time, and this affects the transport of their staff, among other things."
Although it is impossible to gauge the turnover that would have been recorded, Potter is certain the loss of the link will have a negative impact on the day`s trading figures. "We usually have an eight-hour trading day," he says. "Whether we can move eight hours into five hours remains to be seen. We won`t necessarily be able to say how much revenue we`ve lost, but with a reduction like that, I would imagine it would have an impact on our bottom line."
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