PSX declares trading after closing time for Friday valid

Session had continued for 195 seconds beyond scheduled closing

KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) has declared the trade of shares that took place after the market’s scheduled closing time last Friday (April 17) as legitimate.

“Considering the small number of traders and wide market participation in 195 seconds post-closing hours, PSX considers the trades as valid,” PSX said in a press statement on Monday.

The trading session of PSX continued for 195 seconds beyond the scheduled closing at 1pm on last Friday, the statement clarified.

During that additional period, a total of 3.49 million shares were traded which are 1.01% of the total traded volume of 347.49 million shares and approximately 0.79% by value, of the trading that took place on that day.

Some of the brokers and investors said that the prevailing laws demand PSX to cancel the sales that took place beyond the scheduled closing time. They believe some investors managed to sell shares of oil and gas exploration and production companies in those 195 seconds when the international oil prices crashed at world markets, it was discovered.

“On Friday evening, the exchange (PSX) submitted an incident report to the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP),” PSX told.

“This operational error emanated from the processes related to the upper market halt, activated at the PSX for the first time. The system required certain manual procedures that were not performed on that time, partly owing to the remote work from home policy currently in place due to the lockdown situation,” it said.

“As the frontline regulator, the Exchange will continue to review and investigate the matter to identify any other irregularity, as well as provide any further information required by SECP. The exchange stands by its commitment to safeguarding the interests of all its stakeholders and market participants.  Accordingly, it is aggressively working on an implementation of the new IT trading and surveillance system which shall mitigate against such issues in future,” it stated.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2020.

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