National Stock Exchange halts trading after glitch freezes stock prices

India’s largest stock exchange, the National Stock Exchange (NSE), on Wednesday abruptly shut its cash and derivatives segment following a glitch which froze stock prices.

Trading was halted at 11:40 am. Stock and index prices had stopped updating from 10:08 am, said market participants.

"NSE has multiple telecom links with two service providers to ensure redundancy and 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 NSE system. We are working on restoring the systems as soon as possible. In view of the above all the segments have been closed at 11.40 and will be restored as soon as issue is resolved,” said a spokesperson of the exchange.

NSE’s rival BSE continued to function. The benchmark Nifty’s last value shown on the exchange’s website was 14,820, up 112.7 points, or 0.77 per cent. The Sensex was last traded at 49,995, up 243 points, or 0.5 per cent at 12:10 pm.

Market players said that the exchange is likely to cancel all open and unexecuted orders in the system, while orders executed ahead of the close could be honoured.

They said the exchange is likely to resume trade with the so-called pre-open auction session to iron out volatility.

Technical glitches at stock exchanges isn’t an uncommon occurrence. In December, technology-oriented Nasdaq of the US had faced similar connectivity issues impacting several of its customers.