India’s HDFC Securities said it was investigating a “technical glitch” that forced the brokerage on Monday to briefly stop equity trading for its customers on the country’s top bourse, the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE). The brokerage firms that faced a temporary technical issue in early trade on Monday are HDFC Securities, Angel Broking, and discount brokerage firm Zerodha.
Both Indian bourses – NSE and its rival BSE Ltd – issued statements saying their systems were working normally after some investors complained about the issue on social media. This has raised concern among investors and traders as the incident took place less than a week after trading was halted on the National Stock Exchange for four hours because of a technical problem. The NSE has faced criticism from brokerages and traders over how it handled the situation.
“On the morning of 1 March 2021, we suffered a technical glitch where the confirmation for orders placed in the NSE cash segment was not received. All our other segments and our digital platforms were working well. The issue was resolved at 9:50 am,” HDFC Securities said. The brokerage firm said it is investigating the issue and trying to identify the root cause.
Zerodha also said that some of its users faced problems while placing orders intermittently on Kite for a few minutes. “The problem has been resolved now,” it said.
BSE and NSE issued statements that operations were going on smoothly. “All the operations on the NSE platforms are functioning smooth and normal,” an NSE spokesperson said. “There is no issue on fresh orders or square-offs at BSE,” BSE said. “All segments working fine statement was given in response to brokers and investors reporting the problem on Twitter on a competing exchange today morning. No one has reported any problems in trading at BSE India today or last week any day,” Ashish Chauhan, chief executive officer, BSE, said in a tweet.
The @bseindia all segments working fine statement was given in response to brokers and investors reporting the problem on twitter on a competing exchange today morning. No one has reported any problems in trading at @bseindia today or last week any day.
— Ashish Chauhan (@ashishchauhan) March 1, 2021
India’s largest brokerage Zerodha also sent an alert to their clients on Monday morning saying some of its users faced issues “for a few minutes” while placing orders intermittently on its trading platform. It added the issue was resolved but has not commented further.
Zerodha dubbed the Robinhood platform of India, last week faced a backlash on social media for causing losses by squaring off their clients’ open positions on BSE when NSE was shut down. Zerodha and other brokerages blamed the NSE for not giving a more advanced warning of its plans to reopen the exchange last week. NSE apologised for the incident late on Friday.
