The Philippine Stock Exchange was back online on Wednesday afternoon after crashing for two hours shortly after trading opened due to what it is calling a “technical issue”.
Trading halted at 9:32am on Wednesday before resuming at 11:56am, while afternoon trading was unaffected. In a circular issued soon afterwards, the Exchange said it was continuing to investigate the matter alongside its third-party front-end system provider to “identify the root cause.”
However, in an interview with Bloomberg, eManagement Managing Director for Business and Marketing Services, Jonathan Ravelas, said there was “a lot of frustration from traders and investors.
“People want continuity, there should be a backup system in place for such situations,” he said.
The trading halt was far from the first to affect the Philippine bourse either: trading was cancelled for a full day two years ago when dozens of brokers were unable to connect to the system, and in January 2023 trading was delayed by 30 minutes due to another “minor technical” problem. Afternoon trading was previously halted in December 2021, again for technical reasons.