Tokyo Stock Exchange trading suspended due to technical glitch
Trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange was suspended today due to a technical glitch, marking the worst outage since Japan’s main stock exchange shifted to fully electronic trading in 1999.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange, which is the world’s third-largest bourse, said trading would not resume for the rest of the day, throwing investment strategies into chaos.
The blackout, announced just before market open at 9am, affected more than 2,500 stocks, and came on a critical day of economic data releases.
1 October is the first day of both the new financial quarter and the second half of Japan’s financial year, meaning funds are often active as they rejig portfolio weightings.
Although reasons for the glitch were not immediately apparent, Japan’s nationally circulated Asahi newspaper said the cause was likely a mechanical failure.
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Katsunobu Kato, said the shutdown was “highly regrettable”, after it pushed the Nikkei down 1.5 per cent — its biggest decline in two months.
Japan Exchange Group said it was not clear whether trading could resume on Friday, sparking concerns of intense market volatility when stocks are eventually available.
“The timing is really just bad,” said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at Monex in Tokyo. “As expected, US stocks were unaffected by the US presidential election, but gained instead on stimulus hopes. And that could have prompted a surge in stocks’ buybacks in early Japanese market. But the market was robbed of that chance.”
The Tokyo Stock Exchange, which has a market capitalisation of nearly $6 trillion ($4.64 trillion), has previously fallen victim to system failures. It suspended trading in October 2018 due to a similar technical glitch, though today’s outage eclipses any prior fault.