Deutsche Boerse’s Eurex halts trading as data worries mount
EUROPE’S biggest derivatives exchange Eurex Exchange was forced to halt trading yesterday after a computer glitch corrupted data for traders.
The platform, owned by market giant Deutsche Boerse, was brought to a halt between 7:20am and 8:20am London time after its newly released T7 system malfunctioned and stamped the wrong time on deals made by traders.
Eurex Exchange said it halted trading to “protect the integrity of the market”. Trading resumed at 8:30am after a 10 minute window of pre-trading.
The outage is the second major derivatives hiccup this week after Goldman Sachs forced through thousands of false option trade due to a technical hitch. The bank has put four employees on administrative leave over the incident, it has been reported.
The two incidents have raised fears increasingly complex trading systems are pushing systems to the limits, according to Cast Software vice president Lev Lesokhin.
“The more components you have dealing with data, the more likely you are to have data corruption. There are complexity thresholds and we’re starting to hit some of these, ” Lesokhin, a former McKinsey consultant, added.