HO CHI MINH City: Trading on Vietnam’s main stock exchange, home to the nation’s benchmark VNIndex, was halted for the day after a malfunction.
The technical issue occurred during the last 30 minutes of Monday’s trading, when orders couldn’t be matched, the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange said in a statement. The day-long halt means companies including Vietnam Dairy Products JSC, PetroVietnam Gas JSC and VietJet Aviation JSC are all unavailable to trade.
“The Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange has been working with experts from Thailand’s stock exchange to investigate the reason for the technical issue and resolve the problem, and we really hope the trading will be resumed Jan 24,” State Securities Commission Chairman Tran Van Dung said in an emailed statement.
The Hanoi Stock Exchange, the Unlisted Public Company Market and Vietnam’s derivatives market are open as usual, the regulator said in a separate statement. Dung said investors should be “cautious” when trading derivatives because there will be no prices for the underlying stocks of the VN30 Index.
The nation started stock-index derivatives trading in August.
“Technical issues happen at most exchanges around the world, but are usually fixed within one day,” said Michel Tosto, head of institutional sales and brokerage at Viet Capital Securities JSC. “If the issue persists beyond today, I think people will start asking a lot more questions.”
The Ho Chi Minh City bourse experienced a malfunction in August that briefly affected data distribution.