Toronto Stock Exchange Back Online After Hour-Long Outage

Update (11:18am ET): After an outage that was just over an hour long, all is well again and Canada has exited the 3rd world, however briefly:

• *TORONTO STOCK EXCHANGE, TSX VENTURE, ALPHA ARE NOW OPEN

Update (10:50am ET): after disconnecting it from the power outlet, the Canadian operators will try to restart the system at 11:10am.

As reported earlier, all trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange was halted after TMX Group Ltd. said it was experiencing a connection issue for order entries.

The exchange did not know the cause of the outage, TMX Group spokesperson Catherine Kee told BBG. She confirmed that an earlier issue affected trading in all stocks whose tickers began with the letter M through S. That would have affected shares in major companies including Manulife Financial Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc.

“I feel like I’m trading on a third world exchange,” Ninepoint Partners partner and senior portfolio manager Eric Nuttall said. “I have multiple orders for $20 million to $40 million that I cannot execute. It is unacceptable.”

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With stocks suddenly in free fall, reversing all earlier gains after the stronger than expected ISM and JOLTS numbers, the first market casualty of the day came from Canada, when just before 10:00am, the Toronto Stock Exchange broke and halted trading “on all issues on all marketplaces”…

… due to what has been described as a technical issue.

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