A software glitch caused some trades placed through the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) to be delayed throughout Tuesday morning.
According to ASX spokesman Gervase Greene, the exchange's "open interface" was temporarily unable to integrate with the exchange's trade processing system. The ASX was unable to process trades that went through the open interface, he said.
As a result of the glitches, the exchange delayed its start of trading until the integration issues were fully resolved at 11:30am (AEST), Greene said.
"Partial access or selective access is not really fair," he said.
Trades placed through stockbrokers that did not use the open interface system were that were lodged with the ASX before the start of trading at 10am were not processed until 11:30, Greene said.
Open interface refers to the type of straight-through trade processing system the ASX installed in 1998 to streamline automated trade processing, Greene said.
Greene was unable to say what proportion of ASX trades typically went through the open interface system, but he said traders, such as eStar, that offered high-speed trading as their point of difference, processed trades via that system.