The London Stock Exchange suffered two outages yesterday in a bruising blow to confidence in the market.
Only shares on the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250, as well as international securities, were available for trading yesterday morning.
The third set of outages in three months hit trading in small-cap stocks including Asos and Fevertree.
‘We are undertaking immediate analysis and will supply advance updates,’ the LSE said on its website at 9.29am.
At 10.17am, it said normal trading had resumed. But it was hit again less than two hours later.
Meltdown: Only shares on the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250, as well as international securities, were available for trading yesterday morning
This was then fixed, with trade resuming shortly afterwards. In October, trading on hundreds of smaller shares was halted in the final 80 minutes of a session.
And last month, FTSE Russell indexes suffered a 40-minute outage. ‘This is getting beyond a joke,’ said David Morrison, analyst at Trade Nation.
‘LSE is proving to be its own worst enemy when it comes to providing customers with the confidence required to carry out business.’
John Moore, head of trading at Berkeley Capital Wealth Management, said: ‘Investors and traders may lose confidence when they cannot transact, as well as attract attention from the regulator as issues persists.
‘We expect 100 per cent “up-time” as per major stock indexes globally.’
It is not clear what the cause of the outages was, but the recent hiccups serve as an embarrassment as the LSE looks to change from an exchange provider into a data giant.
