NSE halts trading due to technical glitch

NSE said that trading will be restored once the issue is resolved

Telecom disruptions forced National Stock Exchange to shut all trading on Wednesday, leaving investors stranded ahead of the crucial expiry of monthly derivative contracts.

The NSE, headquartered in India's financial capital Mumbai, is the world's largest derivatives bourse by volume and the third-largest stock exchange globally in terms of the number of equity trades, according to its annual report https://static.nseindia.com//s3fs-public/inline-files/NSE_Annual_Report_2020.pdf.

The stock exchange had faced a similar systems glitch in 2017 that led to a five-hour-long shutdown https://www.reuters.com/article/india-nse-idINKBN19V09L?edition-redirect=in, prompting the market regulator to call for a review of the bourse's contingency plans.

"(Trading in) all the segments have been closed at 1140 IST and will be restored as soon as issue is resolved," the NSE said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The NSE outage is unfortunate, especially for this long. Global exchanges should have adequate backups to ensure that even if there is an outage it's restored fast," said Sandip Sabharwal, a Mumbai-based fund manager.

"Asian markets saw a significant crash on Wednesday, and at such times, price discovery real-time becomes even more important."

The blue-chip stock index NSE Nifty 50 last traded up 0.77 per cent at 14,820.25 before the halt. The S&P BSE Sensex index was up 0.51 per cent at 50,005.93, as of 0809 GMT.

Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for a comment on the NSE trading halt.