SINGAPORE- Traders and investors bemoaned yet another disruption to the Singapore stock market on Wednesday. The Singapore Exchange (SGX) announced on Wednesday at 4am that the opening of the market will be delayed to 12.30pm later today after a software defect caused a system problem.
This is the second time in four weeks that trading has been disrupted. A month ago, there was a rare massive system failure that paralysed trading on the local bourse for over three hours.
It is also the third time this year that SGX's systems have suffered technical problems, unnerving customers.
A reader LH Teo asked why there had been no mention of the Dec 1 problem earlier.
Remisier Vincent Khoo said that traders would have expected the Singapore market to open strongly on Wednesday morning, because the United States stock market closed at a record high overnight on Tuesday.
He said: "By 12.30pm, as the hours go by, the market will be affected by what is going on in China, Japan, Hong Kong. We won't know how much effect this delay will have."
The delay will annoy investors, said president and chief executive of Securities Investors Association of Singapore (Sias) David Gerald.
"There's already not much trading going on. Retail investors are either staying away, or going to overseas markets, so this would have added to their annoyance," he told The Straits Times.
Pre-opening of the market will start at noon, and the market will close as usual at 5pm. The software defect has since been rectified, SGX said.
The opening was delayed to enable member firms to complete client position reconciliations, and rectify any errors in the end-of-day processing for Monday, Dec 1, on the securities client-accounting system, SGX added.
Customers may seek clarifications on their positions with their respective member firms.
Members of the public can check www.sgx.com for regular updates or call its hotline (65) 6535 7511 and email asksgx@sgx.com. SGX apologised for any inconvenience caused and assured the market that there was no impact to investors' CDP holdings, or SGX trading, clearing and settlement capabilities.
