Late last night, TMX Group (TSX: X) alerted the public via a news release that markets would return to normal operations as of Friday, February 28. The outage, which began affecting users at 1:51 PM on the TSX Alpha, had affected the entire market within a matter of ten minutes as order entry functions failed.
Within the release, TMX reassured that the outage was not the result of a cyber attack. Rather, it was a system capacity issue related to the messaging technology that the exchange employs. TMX stated it has untaken the necessary steps to “mitigate the risk of recurrence” which includes significantly increasing capacity of the component.
Attempts to restart the system yesterday during regular trading hours proved to be futile as a result of the capacity issue, resulting in the TSX Venture, TSX Alpha, and TSX. As a result the Montreal Exchange, which deals in derivatives, also closed down before 2:00 PM yesterday.
At the time of markets halting, the TSX composite was down 1.90%, while the TSX Venture composite was down 4.58%.
All systems are expected to return to normal for the start of trading this morning.
Information for this briefing was found via the TMX Group Twitter account. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
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