KARACHI: Breaking its silence on the fourth day of the chaotic transition to the new trading and surveillance platform, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) said on Thursday its IT teams are “working constantly on addressing the concerns and issues” in the Jade Trading Terminal (JTT), which is developed by a local vendor upon brokers’ demand.

Insisting that the new trading system bought from China’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) is “working exactly as per specifications”, the exchange said the brokers are facing material issues in JTT, which is the front-end terminal that connects to the new trading system.

The exchange replaced the 20-year-old Karachi Automated Trading System with SZSE’s Designated Time Schedule on Oct 25. Subsequent sessions have witnessed thin volumes as users complained about the absence of basic features and frequent glitches causing trade execution delays.

According to the PSX, the material issues in JTT include slow feed, delays in the updating of trade and disconnection. “The processing speed of the [new] system held true in the live environment. Trading activity continued and over 580 million shares [were] traded in the market today,” the PSX said.

Contrary to the combative tone adopted by the stockbrokers’ association, which has demanded immediate restoration of the old trading system, the PSX took a reconciliatory approach in its first public statement since Oct 25.

It called the technical problems — which resulted in trading suspension for two-and-a-half hours on Wednesday — “teething issues” that are “common with any major technological transition”.

It said both the frontline and the apex regulators looked into all issues that the brokers had highlighted prior to the system’s deployment. “Most [issues] were catered to prior to live deployment while some were mutually agreed to be delivered post go-live,” it said.

The PSX claimed that the decision to go live on Oct 25 was taken after consultation with and mutual agreement of the stockbrokers’ association, the broker coordination committee, other leading brokerage houses and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.

But as per a formal letter available with Dawn, as many as 57 stockbrokers had told PSX CEO Farrukh H. Khan five days before the formal launch that they believed the new system was “not fully ready at this stage to go live”.

The PSX management asserted in its public statement that the Risk Management Gateway Server or RMGS issue was resolved on Monday (Oct 25). “The slow feed issue has been mostly resolved and the changes implemented before market open on Thursday. We expect the disconnection issue to be resolved on Friday,” it said.

The vendor and the PSX team are working on the resolution of delays in the updating of trade logs and expect to implement some changes on Friday and the rest before market open on next Monday, it added.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2021