India's HDFC Securities probing glitch after briefly halting equity trading on NSE
By Abhirup Roy and Aditya Kalra
MUMBAI (Reuters) - 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).
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.
The incident comes after NSE shut down last week for nearly four hours due to what it said was a telecoms network glitch. The NSE has faced criticism from brokerages and traders over how it handled the situation.
"We suffered a technical glitch where the confirmations for orders placed in the NSE cash segment were not received," HDFC Securities said in a statement to Reuters. "We are investigating the issue and trying to identify the root cause."
The issue was resolved at 9:50 a.m. local time (0420 GMT), it said.
As HDFC Securities dealt with the glitch, it asked its customers to place orders on BSE in the meantime, according to a tweet on its official account.
NSE in a statement said all operations on its platforms were "functioning smooth and normal".
The BSE said there were no issues and that all segments were working normally. BSE Chief Executive Ashish Chauhan separately said on Twitter the statement was issued in response to brokers and investors reporting problems on a competing exchange.
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 more advanced warning of its plans to reopen the exchange last week. NSE apologised for the incident late on Friday.
(Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Jacqueline Wong)
