Technical glitches in securities trading systems are not uncommon. Over the past few years, the frequency of these incidents has noticeably increased globally. On September 27, the Shanghai Stock Exchange experienced a trading anomaly where transaction confirmations were delayed.
At 11:00 AM EST, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) announced it was investigating the issue. By late afternoon, SSE issued an apology, stating, "After the market opened, our stock bidding transactions faced a delay in confirmation, impacting trading. By 11:13 AM EST, the issue was gradually resolved. We deeply apologize for this incident."
This is not an isolated occurrence. Earlier this year, Nasdaq experienced a technical fault in March that interrupted pre-market trading for over two hours due to an issue with its matching engine. This was Nasdaq's second incident within three months, following a system error in December 2023 that affected thousands of stock orders.
Similarly, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) faced a trading hiccup on January 24, 2023, when many stocks showed excessive volatility at the market opening, causing some to halt trading. By 9:50 AM EST, NYSE reported all systems were back to normal. NYSE later identified the problem with its Limit Up-Limit Down (LULD) system and canceled some of the erroneous trades.
In 2020, prominent global exchanges experienced multiple failures. In February 2020, the Toronto Stock Exchange temporarily halted trading due to an "order system technical issue." Months later, in August, the New Zealand Stock Exchange faced consecutive days of disruptions from a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, crippling online services.
October 2020 saw one of the most notable incidents when the Tokyo Stock Exchange halted trading for an entire day due to a technical problem, marking the exchange’s most severe fault. The same month, the pan-European bourse experienced a technical issue, suspending trading across Europe for over two hours, causing market panic and significant sell-offs.
In November 2020, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) suspended trading for a day due to a system failure. That same month, the Hong Kong Exchange reported possible display errors in its Hang Seng China Enterprises Index futures and options market systems.
