FILE PHOTO – A TMX Group sign, the company that runs the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), is seen in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 23, 2014. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/File Photo
April 27, 2018
TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian stock markets were shut down on Friday after the exchange operator TMX Group Ltd <X.TO> said it was experiencing issues with trading on all its exchange platforms.
TMX, which operates the Toronto Stock Exchange and other exchanges, did not identify what was causing the issues. In a series of the tweets, it said all users had been “equally impacted and are unable to connect to our exchanges.”
“TMX has decided to shut down all markets for the remainder of the day. Trading will not resume today, including market on close,” TMX Group said in a statement on its website.
The U.S.-listed shares of several Canada-based firms were still trading even as their Toronto-listed securities were idled by the outage.
Blackberry Ltd’s <BB.TO> New York Stock Exchange-listed shares <BB.N>, for example, were trading hours after the company’s TSX-listed shares last traded at 1:38 p.m. EDT (1738 GMT).
The Toronto-based company first flagged the issue on Twitter shortly after 2 p.m. EDT, updating numerous times through the hour to say the issues were persisting and that an investigation was ongoing.
The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX Composite Index <.GSPTSE>, the main Canadian index, was up 0.2 percent at 15,688.93 points before the issues began. The market operates between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. EDT.
“I don’t think it was an incredibly high volume day. At this point it looks like … technical issues,” said Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at SIA Wealth Management. “It doesn’t seem like it’s tied to a flash crash.”
The TMX Group operates numerous Canadian exchanges, including the Toronto Stock Exchange, the TSX Venture Exchange, and the Montréal Exchange.
(Reporting by Julie Gordon and Fergal Smith in Toronto; Editing by Tom Brown)
