In a very unusual happening, the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) experienced some technical glitches, resulting in the suspension of all trading activities on currencies and precious metals for over an hour. The outage occurred at 11:26 (Moscow Time), the Russian exchange then reported that it will restart Forex trading activities at 12:40 local time, or 09:40 GMT.
At first the MOEX exchange could not comment on the reasoning’s behind the sudden suspension of the trading activities, all it could commentate was that there were technical glitches. However in a more recent announcement on the website, it has been clarified that the brief suspension of trading activities, indeed happened due to technical malfunction. Specifically, an issue was found in the operation gateways, which are used to connect with the Market’s trading system. Due to this, the computing process that regulates the risk between the FX markets and the Exchange’s Derivatives was unable to execute.
Accordingly, the MOEX made a public apology in their press release, whilst communication the following: “Trading on Moscow Exchange's other markets, including the Derivatives market, was not affected.”
On a different note, the Russian rubble was trading at 0.2% stronger against the dollar at 61.83 prior to the outage. Reportedly, the exchange has been booming in trading activities in February as a strong rise in trading volume with an aggregate FX volume of to RUB 19.6 trln ($315 billion), a 37% increase from the previous month.
