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The London Stock Exchange suffered two outages on Tuesday morning, hitting trading in hundreds of small-cap stocks and marking the latest glitch at a venue battling falling trading volumes.
Only stocks on the FTSE 100 and 250 indices and global depositary receipts, a certificate representing shares in overseas companies, were able to be traded.
The LSE first said it was investigating the issue at 9.29am, with trading suspended in companies including online retailer Asos, drinks maker Fevertree and polling business YouGov. At 10.17am, it said normal trading had resumed for affected stocks.
But just over an hour later the exchange suffered a second outage, hitting the same stocks again. “We are undertaking immediate analysis,” it said at 11.35am.
The two trading failures in one morning mark yet another blow to the LSE, whose services are relied on by thousands of investors across the world but which is facing tumbling trading volumes.
The outages appear identical to an issue the exchange faced in mid-October, when trading in the shares of hundreds of small companies was forced to end early. The venue later said the incident was a technical issue caused by a matching engine fault.
In November, FTSE Russell indices also faced a trading glitch.
Daily equity trading volumes on the LSE fell 20 per cent in the third quarter of this year, compared with the same period last year, to £3.3bn a day. In recent years, the LSE Group has increasingly focused away from equities towards data, as it seeks to become a market data company, helped by its $27bn acquisition of Refinitiv in 2019.
Robert Johnson is a UK-based business writer specializing in finance and entrepreneurship. With an eye for market trends and a keen interest in the corporate world, he offers readers valuable insights into business developments.
