The best of the systems in the world have experienced glitches. What is the learning experience from what happened at NSE today?
It is par for the course. Even the US systems have gone down in the past but this one is a little peculiar because this one started with just the glitch on updation, there were no trading glitches. It is very peculiar that they shut the market down when just the indices were not showing up. It is important for all of us to reassess where our positions were as the market opens. People are going to look at their accounts again and see what the net positions were and what has got executed and what has not got executed. That transition will also take time.
Once the market starts, could there be a rush to square up positions?
No, I think you cannot square up positions because you do not know your positions in the first place because in the last few minutes of the shutdown, you do not know what orders got executed. If you try to rush to square up positions, then you may not have the position to start with and you could be creating fresh positions. That is why I am mentioning that it is very important that when the NSE opens up, they give time to people to look at their account statement to see what trading has taken place. Not everybody is online. Some work through brokers, some work through phones.
It is important to give people time to tell them what exactly went through when the market shut down and what was in abeyance. One will start with absolutely zero. I do not think you should be in a rush to square up because you have to find out what exactly happened to your last few transactions.
More critical is the margin requirements as we come closer to the end of the day. There must be some relaxation coming for margin requirements as well. The F&O traders need to worry about margins now. So a lot more is at stake at this point of time than just the trading.
