System Glitch Hits TSE

October 10, 2018

Tokyo- A system glitch hit the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Tuesday, making it unable for some brokerage firms to accept trading orders.

According to Japan Exchange Group Inc., the operator of the leading stock market in the country, also known as JPX, a problem occurred at one of the four computer servers used to connect securities firms to the exchange's trading system at around 7:30 a.m. (10:30 p.m. Monday GMT).

"We apologize for causing a tremendous impact on investors," JPX Senior Executive Officer and Chief Information Officer Ryusuke Yokoyama told a news conference.

The server in question went down after it received in only several ten seconds a flood of data--more than 1,000 times heavier than usual--not on orders but to confirm whether communication paths were established, Yokoyama explained, adding a securities firm mistakenly sent them.

Trading on the TSE is expected to return to normal from Wednesday, he noted.

JPX has already reported the system failure to the country's Financial Services Agency.

Nearly 40 brokerage houses, including major players Nomura Securities Co., Daiwa Securities Co. and SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., became unable to take trading orders normally, with some of the companies partially suspending order acceptance.

The operator called on brokerages to switch to the healthy servers, but those firms failed to do so, JPX officials said.

"Our communication with securities firms was insufficient," Yokoyama said, while ruling out JPX's damages payment to the affected firms.

He did not comment on why the announcement on the system glitch was made so late. Jiji Press