On Friday November 27, 2009 at 4:53 p.m., Tokyo Commodity Exchange, Inc. ("TOCOM" or the "Exchange") experienced a technical problem, which led to the suspension of the night session for gold contracts (standard, mini and options) at 5:10 p.m. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused to market participants and concerned parties.
The trading resumed in accordance with the regular schedule from today's (November 30) day session, after identifying and resolving the problem on November 28 and 29.
The below describes when and how the problem took place, the cause of the problem, and the measures taken against the problem.
1. Technical Problem and Suspension of Trading Session (November 27)
16:53 | NTT Data, the system operating company of TOCOM trading system, confirmed the program error in System server of Precious Metals Market (Primary) and the error of quote price information in Gold October 2010 contract. |
16:55- 57 | TOCOM received a notification from NTT data about the errors. |
16:57 | NTT Data informed TOCOM that the fail-over had occurred, automatically switching the system from primary to secondary server. |
16:59 | TOCOM confirmed the error of quote price information in Gold October 2010 contract. |
17:00 | Circuit Breaker (CB) triggered in gold standard and platinum standard market right after the opening auction. Market moved to continuous session (Zaraba) after 5 minutes halt as usual. |
17:05 | TOCOM confirmed that the system does not update the best bid price of Gold October 2010 (JPY 3,205). |
17:08 | TOCOM announced to members, etc. the suspension of gold contracts from 17:10. (17:18 Posted the same announcement on the TOCOM Website.) |
17:10 | TOCOM suspend the gold contracts (standard, mini, and options) based on TOCOM Contingency Plan (CP). |
17:47 | TOCOM announced to members, etc. that the cause of the technical problem is now under investigation. |
18:16 | TOCOM announced to members, etc. the suspension of whole night session of gold contracts (standard, mini, and options) to resolve the problem. (18:20 Posted the same announcement on the TOCOM Website.) |
2. Cause of the Problem
Through the investigation, the Exchange confirmed that the technical problem was caused by the following two defects (bugs) with the Nasdaq OMX software.
(1) Cause of the Fail-over
During the acceptance of the orders, the price at which a maximum number of orders can be executed could not be calculated because the memory was not deleted each time the calculation took place, as they should have been, and the system ran out of memory.
(2) Cause of Erroneous Quote Display
In relation to the above fail-over problem, an error occurred while moving data etc. to the secondary server.
3. Measures taken against Problem
Having identified the cause of the problem, Nasdaq OMX fixed the defect in the software.
And on November 28 and 29, TOCOM and NTT Data confirmed that the problem was resolved with the patch program provided by Nasdaq OMX, through the replication test (replicating the trouble to occur with the pre-patch program) and the verification test (confirming that the same trouble will not occur with the patch program).
4. Request for Reports from Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)
Having received a request from METI on November 27, TOCOM plans to submit reports on this matter on November 30 and December 2.
TOCOM once again would like to express its deepest apologies to everyone involved for the inconvenience caused by the problem.
TOCOM deeply regret for letting the technical problem to occur. We will continue to exert all our efforts to ensure the proper operation of the market, including the implementation of the preventative measures against the problem. As we move on with these efforts, we would highly appreciate your kind understanding and cooperation.