Toronto, Montreal stock exchanges shut down early due to technical issues

TMX Group Ltd. on Friday afternoon said trading on the Canadian exchanges it operates in Toronto and Montreal were closed early due to technical issues that couldn’t be resolved during the session, according to its website.

At about 2 p.m. Eastern, TMX Group tweeted that it was “experiencing issues with trading,” explaining that users weren’t able to connect to its trading platforms. Similar to the New York exchanges, the regular trading session for Toronto and Montreal run from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

TMX announced its decision to shut down all markets for the remainder of the session with about an hour left of regular trading, a decision that also impacted so-called market-on-close orders, which can help funds determine their net asset value, or NAV, with certain index funds using those closing orders to determine the value of their underlying assets.

Toronto Stock Exchange is home to stocks such as Royal Bank of Canada












RY, +1.35%










Suncor Energy












SU, -2.07%










 and Barrick Gold Corporation












ABX, +1.10%










Shares of those companies which trade on other exchanges were performing as normal.

Shares of Ceridian HCM Holding Inc.












CDAY, -2.21%










which made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange as well as Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday, also were largely unaffected. Shares soared 42% on Thursday and closed slightly lower on Friday.

Spokeswoman of TMX said the company is still investigating the issue and will provide an update with further details on their website and Twitter account.

TMX Group’s tech problems come just days after The New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday suspended trading in the shares of five Nasdaq-listed companies including Google-parent Alphabet












GOOG, -0.96%











GOOGL, -1.14%










and Amazon.com Inc.












AMZN, +3.60%










  due to a what was initially referred to as “a price scale code’ issue.

“What is odd about the shutdown is that trading on TMX today was fairly routine with normal volumes. So far this disruption does not seem to be trading-driven, such as other halts that we experienced in the U.S.,” said Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at SIA Wealth Management, an independent investment management firm based in Calgary, Canada.