Share trading platform Turquoise said today that it is confident
its core trading platform can cope with rapid rises in trading
volumes as the markets face further turmoil.
The failure of investment bank Lehman Brothers, the merger
between LloydsTSB and HBOS, and fallout from the US sub-prime
mortage lending debacle have pushed trading volumes to
unprecedented levels in recent weeks.
But Yann L'Huillier, CTO at Turquoise, said the company has
completed a rigorous programme of testing which pushed the exchange
to its limits.
"When we did our testing we ran the platform for eight hours at
6,000 orders per second and we created more than 18 million
orders," he said.
The exchange, which
launched on Monday, ran tests for months and ran as a
scaled down operation for weeks before going live.
The testing programme will allow Turquoise to minimise the risk
of downtime, which is particularly critical for investors when the
markets are volatile.
"Downtime at exchanges is counted in milliseconds and seconds,
whereas in the wider industry it is counted in minutes, hours and
even days," said James Milne, senior consultant at AppLabs, which
carried out the testing for Turquoise.
AppLabs tested the Turquoise platform for volumes of up to
13,000 trades per second. Turquoise's use of standard software made
it easier to make changes to the platform during testing, he
said.
Earlier this month the
London Stock Exchange's trading platform was unable to complete
trades for almost a day following technical problems.
The London Stock Exchange did not give precise details of the
cause of the problems but said it was the result of "a combination
of technical processes occurring at the same time".
Clients have called for a more detailed explanation.