BSE trading hit by glitches in new ‘Bolt Plus’ system

10 Apr 2014

Trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange was marred for the second day running on Wednesday, as share prices stopped updating for about 15-20 minutes during morning trade at Asia's oldest exchange.

The disruption comes after the BSE on Monday introduced a new trading system for shares called BOLT Plus, which the exchange is using under licence from Deutsche Boerse.

The system promises to cut trading time to microseconds. It was launched for currency and debt trading in February and worked smoothly, traders said.

 They added shares had briefly stopped updating on Monday and the problem had recurred on Wednesday.

''Minor teething troubles were seen by a few participants during the opening session in the morning, which have been identified and rectification put into motion. We believe the system of various participants will stabilise over a few days in terms of their integration with the BSE's new trading platform,'' the bourse stated.

About 900 members had traded on the new trading system and 136 million orders were entered through it, with a peak order entry of about 16,000 orders a second, the BSE statement said.

''Most exchanges in India have not attempted technology change due to the apprehension that it might not work out. We had taken a call to implement new technology two years back and has successfully implemented this technology transfer,'' it said.

The BSE has banked on its partnership with Deutsche Boerse and the introduction of BOLT Plus to win back market share from its rival, the National Stock Exchange.