Trading glitch on BSE for 2nd straight session

Disruption comes after BSE introduced on Monday a new trading system for shares called BOLT Plus

Trading on the BSE was marred for a second day on Wednesday. Dealers said share prices on the exchange had stopped updating for about 15-20 minutes during the morning trade at Asia’s oldest exchange.

The disruption, confirmed by seven traders from different brokerages, comes after the BSE on Monday introduced a new trading system for shares called BOLT Plus, which the exchange is using under licence from Deutsche Boerse.

BOLT Plus, which promises to cut trading to microseconds, was unveiled for currency and debt trading in February without any disruptions, traders said.

They added shares had briefly stopped updating on Monday and the problem had recurred on Wednesday.

“Minor teething troubles were seen by a few participants during the opening session in the morning, which have been identified and rectification put into motion. We believe the system of various participants will stabilise over a few days in terms of their integration with the BSE’s new trading platform,” the BSE stated.

The exchange said about 900 members had traded on the new trading system and 136 million orders were entered through the new system. BSE added the peak order entry was about 16,000 orders a second.

“Most exchanges in India have not attempted technology change due to the apprehension that it might not work out. We had taken a call to implement new technology two years back and has successfully implemented this technology transfer,” BSE said.

BSE has trumped its partnership with Deutsche Boerse and the introduction of BOLT Plus marked its bid to win back market share from its dominant rival, the National Stock Exchange.

Earlier, too, Indian exchanges had suffered from trading disruptions which had raised concerns about the reliability of the trading infrastructure.