PSX gives reason behind late closure

On Friday, April 17, 2020, the trading session of Pakistan Stock Exchange Limited (the Exchange) continued for 195 seconds beyond the scheduled closing at 1 pm. During that additional period, a total of 3,492,550 shares were traded which are 1.01% of the total traded volume of 347,496,580 shares and approximately 0.79% by value, of the trading that took place on Friday. Considering the small number of trades and wide market participation in the 195 seconds period post-closing hours, PSX considers the trades as valid. On Friday evening, the Exchange submitted an incident report to the Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan.

This operational error emanated from the processes related to the upper market halt, activated at the PSX for the first time ever. The system required certain manual procedures that were not performed on time, partly owing to the remote work from home policy currently in place due to the lockdown situation.

As the frontline regulator, The Exchange will continue to review and investigate the matter to identify any other irregularity, as well as provide any further information required by SECP. The Exchange stands by its commitment to safeguard the interests of all its stakeholders and market participants. Accordingly, it is aggressively working on implementation of the new IT trading and surveillance system, which will be a state of the art system, and shall significantly mitigate against such issues in future.-PR