The Australian sharemarket will face a cautious start this morning with the shock technical halt yesterday curbing any optimism in the wake of another record close on Wall Street because of news of another apparently successful COVID-19 vaccine.
The overnight futures platform had rise of just one point pencilled in for the start of trading for the ASX 200 (down from a fall of 5 just after 5am) from 10am.
That was despite the Dow and S&P 500 closing at new record highs (and hitting new intraday highs in trading) after Moderna Inc revealed its COVID vaccine was 94% successful in early trials.
Traders preferred to wait and see that the ASX 200 will resume trading successfully and without a hitch after problems allowed only 24 minutes of trading on Monday.
One stock to watch will be the ASX itself. ASX shares closed at $82.41 yesterday, down 7 cents from the opening in the short session. The size of today’s fall will tell us if traders are happy and convinced by the assurances that trading will be happening today without further problems.
The shock waves of Monday’s hitch are still rattling around markets.
The ASX 200 burst out the gates at 10 am yesterday with a 1% plus rise and came to a shuddering halt 24 minutes later and remained unmoved.
It is the biggest tech glitch so far with a new system the ASX has installed and recalls similar problems back in 2016. The ASX website and data retrieval systems have had problems since the changeover on October 12and there has been an ongoing problem in pricing some futures products.
Like a cricket match with rain, play on the ASX was abandoned at 3 pm after attempts to restart the market failed for another time.
The early rush saw the ASX 200 hit near nine-month highs thanks to the continuing rotation into value blue-chips.
Wall Street’s lead was strong after US markets finished higher on Friday despite concern over the spread of COVID-19 across the country. The S&P 500 had ended the week at a recored high, giving a strong lead for local investors.
CSL ended 1.8% higher at a more-than six-month high of $315.04 following news it will invest $800 million in a new vaccine production plant in Melbourne.
The ASX said late yesterday the underlying issue has been identified and trading will recommence at 10 am today (Tuesday).
The ASX 200 The local benchmark rose by as much as 1.3% before the pause to touch 6,487.3 points, its highest intraday mark since early March. It closed at 6,484.3, its highest finish since February 27
ASX CEO Dominic Stevens said the exchange “is very disappointed with today’s outage and sorry for the disruption caused to investors, customers, and other market users.
“The outage falls short of the high standards we set ourselves and the standards others expect of us
And market regulator, ASIC said in a statement late on Monday “The ASX cash equity market trading platform did not reopen for trading today Monday 16 November after an outage occurred during the opening auction. ASIC remains in regular communication with ASX, market participants, and members of the Australian Council of Financial Regulators.
“We are focussed on ensuring that ASX reopens in an orderly manner on Tuesday 17 November, and that market integrity is not compromised. ASIC will also monitor for any impacts resulting from the failure of ASX Trade to open for most of the day.”
