KARACHI: A new trading system is set to go live on the Pakistan Stock Exchange on May 15, the national bourse said on Thursday.

The planned rollout of the Designated Time Schedule (DTS), a trading and surveillance platform meant for securities listed on the PSX, follows the botched implementation of the same software back in October 2021.

Speaking to Dawn on Thursday, Pakistan Stockbrokers Association Secretary General Bilal Farooq Zardi said he’s confident that the rollout of the new system will be seamless this time around.

The representative body of stockbrokers mounted a fierce protest against the exchange’s first attempt to implement the DTS on the pretext that the system lacked even basic features at the time, which led to “frequent glitches” and reduced volume of traded shares in the country’s only stock exchange.

“The latest effort has been collaborative. Mar­ket participants and the PSX have worked toge­ther to ensure its efficiency. We’ve had many error-free mock sessions on the new system,” he said.

The PSX acquired the new system from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE), a related party, for Rs464.6 million, according to its latest financial accounts. It’s supposed to be the “safest and most advanced” system with the “utmost reliability, superior performance and low latency”.

The exchange has termed the shift to the new software the “largest project in PSX’s history” that’ll replace the two-decade-old trading system known as the Karachi Auto­mated Trading System (KATS).

The botched rollout led to “order confirmation delays” as well as problems in viewing outstanding positions. The stockbrokers complained at the time that the new system presented a “real possibility of double buying/selling”. In addition, there were issues with price summary, market summary and pre-opening bids at that time.

The spokesperson for the PSX didn’t respond to the question about the improvements that’ve been introduced in the new trading system during the last year and a half. Neither did the spokesperson confirm the number of error-free mock sessions carried out so far.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2023