MCX and SEBI officials were not immediately available for comment on the hour-long outage that ended about 7:35 p.m. But sources aware of the development confirmed that trading was halted after client orders failed to go through to the exchange.
They added that MCX would conduct an examination on the causes of the “glitch” as mock trading had been conducted successfully for a month and a half on the new software before it went live.
The new version performed properly since opening at 10 am to around 18:36 pm when the outage took place, sources added. The erstwhile Financial Technologies, now 63 Moons Technologies, is the technology provider to MCX, which is anchored by Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Clients trading on the exchange were given an opportunity to cancel their orders from 19:25 to 19:35, when trading resumed. Broking officials added that clients were spared adverse impact when trading resumed at 19:35 pm as the US exchanges Comex and Nymex, from which MCX takes price cues for gold and contracts such as crude and copper, were closed for Labour Day holiday.
“The US holiday meant that there were no sharp price moves,” said Rahul Kalantri, VP (commodities), Mehta Commodities.
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Trading on MCX takes place between 10 am and 11:30 pm.
However, some officials such as Kishore Narne, head of commodities at Motilal Oswal Commodities, rued the outage. On the equity market, clients could shift positions to either BSE or NSE “in the event of a trading halt,” Narne said. But as MCX was the only liquid metals and energy bourse, clients had no options for squaring off, he added.