The Toronto Stock Exchange missed an entire business day Wednesday because of a technical glitch, the first time in history for such an occurrence for Canada's dominant trading platform.
The TMX, which owns the TSX and the TSX Venture Capital, has said it intends to reopen at 9:30 a.m. ET Thursday. They said that technical issues with data feeds were the reason for the shut down of the TSX.
"Because the data feeds provide information to investors to guide their trading decisions, trading was halted to ensure market integrity," the TSX said in a statement.
It was the third major glitch for the TSX this year, leaving investors angered and looking at alternative platforms such as distant rivals, Alpha and Pure, to trade. Other investors simply took the day off from trading on the Canadian market.
Luc Bertrand, deputy CEO of TMX, which owns the TSX, told Â鶹´«Ã½net Wednesday afternoon that the unprecedented shut down was "extraordinary."
"It's a very unique situation, one we are working very hard to rectify," he said.
"We fully intend to be fully operational tomorrow morning."
The TSX makes up about 90 per cent of Canadian stock trading. On average, 451 million shares were traded daily on the TSX through November.
Traders were seriously unimpressed with the unexpected interruption.
"This is ridiculous, this nonsense with this system -- I don't know what to think," Fred Ketchen, manager of equity trading at Scotia Capital, told The Canadian Press.
"I don't know if a mouse crawled in and bit through a piece of cord or what the Sam Hill happened. But obviously, it's a data disruption and it leaves you all standing around picking your seat."
The TSX's problems are seen as gains for its much newer, and much smaller, rivals Alpha and Pure.
Regulatory changes in recent years have allowed for more competition for different stock trading platforms in Canada, which both Alpha and Pure are attempting to capitalize on.
The outage followed a promising Tuesday, in which the TSX main index jumped 262 points in reaction to the historic cut to the key interest rate by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which cut rates down to a range of zero to 0.25 per cent.
Many major Canadian companies are traded on the New York markets, but trading there takes extra time for Canadian investors.
