Trading resumes for the TSX, TSXV and Alpha markets after technical issue
TMX Group Inc. says market activity has resumed for the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSXV and Alpha markets after technical issues halted trading.
As of 10:47 am EDT, the stock market operator said in a tweet that the TSX markets were in a “pre-open state” and clients would now be “able to connect to Order Entry sessions.”
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According to the TMX Toronto Stock Exchange website, trading resumed at 11:20 a.m. EDT.
TMX – which operates the TSX and the TSX Venture exchanges - previously tweeted that it has a trading problem with “TSX Order Entry symbol range M – S.”
Toronto Stock Exchange is currently experiencing a connection issue with the TSX Order Entry symbol range M - S. We are currently investigating and will provide update ASAP.
— TMX Group (@TMXGroup) November 1, 2022
— TMX Group (@TMXGroup) November 1, 2022
John McKenzie, chief executive officer of TMX Group, apologized to customers and said it was a “software-related issue” and his team has identified the problem,
John McKenzie, CEO of TMX Group, joins BNN Bloomberg today was the first time they operated their disaster recovery backup site, and that the process takes an hour. He says today’s outage was caused by a software related issue and that the feedback they received on the speed with which trading resumed on the TSX was “quite impressive”. McKenzie apologizes to clients and stakeholders for the disruption and expects to be up and running on the regular platform tomorrow morning.
“When the market integrity was impacted by clients being unable to connect to us in the morning, the right decision was to halt the market and restart in our back-up site so that people could trade effectively the rest of the day without any further interruption,” McKenzie said in an interview on Tuesday.
He said it takes around an hour to move over to the back-up site.
“That's our commitment to the street because there needs time for all the clients to connect and ensure that their orders are in the book and ready to go,” McKenzie said.
“So that's about market integrity, it's our commitment to the industry in terms of how fast we'll do it.”
He added that they expect to be running on their primary market site tomorrow morning.
“Candidly, this is the first time we've ever actually operated in that disaster recovery backup site and it was done so flawlessly, so I really want to be thankful to our clients,” McKenzie said
The last time the TSX experienced a trading interruption was on Feb. 27, 2020.
In a press release at the time, the stock market operator said the trading system had encountered a market interruption due to a “system capacity issue within the messaging technology component of TMX's trading engine.”
This marks the third outage with the TMX Group over the past six years.
Lorne Steinberg, president of Lorne Steinberg Wealth Management, said the outage would have had a larger impact on investors “if it had continued for the whole trading day.”
Lorne Steinberg, president of Lorne Steinberg Wealth Management, shares his thoughts on the technical issues at the TSX after trading has resumed.
“We've seen I think every major exchange in the world at one time or another experience one of these technical issues, resulting in a stoppage of trading,” Steinberg said in an interview on Tuesday.
“So had this gone on for all day long, it might have had a larger impact, but I think it's just one of those incredibly annoying things that we suffer with when technology doesn't treat us well.”
