The London Stock Exchange's migration to a new Linux-based trading platform has been dogged by problems, affecting brokers for third parties, who do not provide advice.
On Thursday, Selftrade told ZDNet UK it has been experiencing problems in displaying correct prices for certain London Stock Exchange (LSE) shares. According to CityAM, other brokers, including Thomson Reuters, have been affected.
The trouble followed a stumble on Tuesday, in which the LSE's end-of-day auction went ahead 42 seconds later than expected, causing problems for traders setting end-of-day prices, according to the Financial Times.
"We are currently experiencing some issues with our price feed data and while most stocks are showing correct prices some are not being refreshed and historical prices are being displayed," online broker Selftrade said in an statement on its website on Thursday. "We are working with our IT service provider to resolve fully. This does not affect trading. We apologise for the continued inconvenience and thank you for your patience."
The LSE shifted to the Millennium Exchange Suse Enterprise Linux-based platform for its UK cash markets on Monday. The platform has a chequered history. In November a trading pool based on the platform was knocked offline for two hours due to 'human error', causing the general Millennium Exchange shift to be postponed until 2011.
ZDNet UK understands that the London Stock Exchange Group is working with data vendors to iron out the issues, and that the vendors have had trouble interfacing with the new data feeds from the new platform, after having access to the platform's test environment and network connections for a year.
Update 3pm
The LSE issued a statement on the glitches in the afternoon, admitting that "a couple of market data vendors have experienced some specific issues aligning to the new Millennium Exchange platform".
The LSE worked with over 400 member firms and vendors during a 15-month period prior to the switch-over "to ensure third parties were ready for the go-live".
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We commented on this situation here: http://www.roqit.co.uk/news/roq-it-comment-on-lse-migration-issues/17/2/2011
Stephen Johnson – Director, at Quality Assurance and Testing specialist ROQ IT, said, “This has the hallmarks of a poorly controlled project lacking in appropriate process and quality gates. Large migration and integration projects are notoriously difficult and must be treated with respect. The only way to deliver these systems is to have clear process and communication and the Quality Assurance team having a respected place at the top table. It’s amazing to think that either these issues weren’t discovered in a year of testing or that the decision was made to go live despite these show stopping issues. This clearly shows the value of having an independent testing team or function that is willing to stand up and stop chaos prevailing”.
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