Glitch @ BSE

A three-hour long tech glitch stopped trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange as the problem prevented a large number of members from logging onto the bourse's servers. As a result, trading was stopped at about 9.30 am and regular trading resumed at about 12.35 pm after resolving the issue. Post the rectification, normal trading continued till 3.30bpm. During this time, the sensex almost broke the 26K mark as it hit a new all-time peak of 25,999 points but eventually settled at 25,824, down 17 points.
An initial investigation into the long technical glitch showed that it was a hardware problem, which was resolved around 12.15 pm. BSE CEO Ashish Kumar Chauhan said that compared to 8,000 to 10,000 live connections to the server every day , the number fell to about 2,000 at 9.34 am which forced the exchange to shut down trading. Turnover at the BSE more than halved due to the network outage. The derivative segment's total turnover tumbled 74% to Rs 13,395 crore, while the equity segment's turnover tanked 67% to Rs 1,430 crore compared to Wednesday .
This was the second tech glitch to hit the exchange in the last two months, although the previous one did not lead to total closure of trading. “The number of primary connections had come down to less than 2,000 and hence the market needed to be closed as per current regulations applicable to closure of markets,“ a release from BSE said.
Even before the stock exchange could shift trading to its disaster recovery site, the problem was solved and trading started from its servers located at the P J Towers in south Mumbai. “This was the first complete network outage in the last four years,“ Chauhan said. He also said that there was no monetary loss to any members due to the outage.The exchange also said all the orders which were in the books when it stopped trading in the morning session were cancelled. However, since trading on BSE was stopped for three hours, traders who also arbitrage on stock prices between BSE and NSE could not execute their trades during the period of outage.
Chauhan said that a BSE committee has been set up for a `root cause analysis' of the tech glitch. The report of the committee -consisting of BSE officials, software vendor HCL Comnet, and hardware manufacturer Cisco -will be sent to the exchange's board which will then send the same to Sebi.