Software Can’t Catch to Explosion of Trading in China

The Chinese market has doubled in the last six months. Turnover in Shanghai and Shenzhen surpassed the NYSE and Nasdaq last month. Apparently, this is causing some problems.

China’s stock trading fever has made the Shanghai Stock Exchange the world’s biggest in terms of turnover, surpassing the New York Stock Exchange, but the explosion in volumes has exceeded the ability of the exchange’s software to report it.

The exchange’s trading turnover exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($161.28 billion) for the first time on Monday, but the data could not be properly displayed because its software was not designed to report numbers that high.

“This is a software configuration issue, not a technical glitch,” the Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a statement, adding that trading and price quotes for individual stocks were not affected.

The exchange said it would need to replace its current software files that handle volume reporting to resolve the issue.

One of the forgotten episodes on Wall Street was the paperwork crisis on the late 1960s. The NYSE had to shorten trading hours so brokerage houses could catch up.

Posted by on April 20th, 2015 at 9:47 am


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