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FTSE 100 DOWN: FTSE fails to open – What is going on with the UK stock market right now?


The London Stock Exchange failed to open this morning, triggering panic of a UK market meltdown.

A high open had been predicted for the FTSE on Friday, however, the index did not open as planned.

In a statement at 9.20am this morning, the LSE said: “All GTD orders on partition 1 and 2 have been expired.

“Instruments on partition 1 and 2 will resume in an opening auction call at 09:20 and will uncross at 09:40. 

“EDSP auction for FTSE100 securities will commence as per today’s standard schedule at 10:10. Users that receive rejection messages, are advised to log out their trading sessions and log back on to the relevant gateways again.”

The FTSE 100 opened at approximately 9.42am BST, and the blue-chip index quickly hit around 0.8pc at open, just behind European indices.

Trading seems to have resumed as normal as of 9.54am BST, however, the reason for the delay has not yet been given the London Stock Exchange.

The outage comes as the blue-chip index hit a six-month low on Thursday, as concerns about the world economy grew in line with the escalations of the US-Chine trade war. 

Over 30 days the index is down more than 6.7 percent but is still up more than 5 percent since the beginning of 2019.

“Can confirm there are technical problems affecting certain securities on the London Stock Exchange,” a spokesperson from the LSE told CNBC Friday. 

The delayed open makes this the biggest FTSE 100 and 250 outage since 2011.

Neil Wilson, analyst at Markets.com, said the outage was frustrating.

He said: “Still waiting. The FTSE cash equity market has failed to open and remains closed for the time being.

“The FTSE 350 is closed but AIM trading is still ok. These things happen – the last delayed start to trading was only a year ago.

“Technical glitches are inevitable, frustrating as it is for everyone.”

What is going on with the UK stock market right now?

The UK stock markets usually open at 8am. 

London Stock Exchange said in a statement on Friday a “potential trading services issue” caused it to delay the opening of both FTSE 100 and 250 stocks.

Companies in those benchmarks include BP Plc, AstraZeneca Plc,  HSBC Holdings Plc and Tate & Lyle Plc.

The group said in an update around 10 minutes prior to the market opening it was “investigating” the issue.

At 8.02am, after the scheduled opening time, it announced to markets the open of securities listed on the two flagship indices would be “delayed.”

This is the second time in 14 months the FTSE has faced a delayed open, and in June 2018 an hour-long blackout hit the index. 

The blackout was caused by a software issue, and was the first to impact the FTSE in seven years.

Klaudius Sobczyk, a fund manager at PEH Wertpapier AG in Frankfurt told Bloomberg: “The market is at the moment in a very delicate stage.

“Should the market fall or rally strongly and the stock exchange is still shut, this would be a terrible development for active traders/investors.”

There will be a further update from the London Stock Exchange at 9.15am.

Marc Ostwald, global strategist and chief economist at ADM Investor Services International told CNBC: “One of those things that are not that infrequent, first since June 2018 for FTSE100; if there are any sharp moves elsewhere then it might prompt the odd spikey move when it does open, but that is just a function of sorting out imbalances.”



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