On 19 September, the ASX equity market experienced a technical failure that impacted the proper operation of the market. This caused a delay to the market opening and an early market close, as well as generating a series of trade cancellations throughout the day.

ASIC has reviewed the initial incident report prepared by ASX, which has identified a hardware failure as the triggering event of the particular incident.  Secondary issues arising from this failure are also being investigated by ASX, and we will also review the conclusions from this further work.

ASIC closely monitors all trading activity on the securities markets run by our licensed market operators.

As part of its role, ASIC is continuing to also review a number of associated considerations which arose on and from the incident which relate to the way in which ASX, brokers, investors and other stakeholders reacted and responded to the issue.

Historically, Australian trading platforms like ASX have at least met global benchmarks for up-times and reliability, with up-times on an annual basis regularly close to 100 per cent. 

The purpose of ASIC’s ongoing review is to determine whether there are any changes which could assist the market and market users to function more effectively, should such circumstances reoccur in the future. We will issue a report that develops these themes. This work will draw on our own observations, as well as industry feedback and perspectives on international approaches to incident management.