Emkay Global's bad orders trigger brief halt on Nifty

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The National Stock Exchange (NSE) was brought to a brief halt on Friday after Emkay Global Financial Services placed more than five dozen erroneous orders worth more than $125 million, triggering a sharp fall on the Nifty.

The NSE said a single dealer terminal at Emkay placed 59 erroneous orders for an institutional client, resulting in trades worth over Rs 6.5 billion.

The trades triggered a sudden drop of more than 900 points on the 50-share Nifty to a session low of 4,888.20 points - 15.5 per cent below Thursday's close.

After resuming, the index last traded down 0.7 per cent at 12.39 p.m.

"These non-algo market orders have been entered for an erroneous quantity which resulted in executing trades at multiple price points across the entire order book, thereby causing the circuit filter to be triggered," the NSE said in a statement.

An exchange source declined to comment on whether those misplaced trades would be reversed, or what would happen to any other trades placed at the time of the trading halt.

Officials at Emkay, a financial services firm founded 17 years ago, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Trading on the NSE, whose $731 billion market value exceeds that of BSE, was halted for around 15 minutes during morning trading. NSE futures and options markets traded as normal and the BSE was uninterrupted.

Some financial stocks, which make up more than a fifth of the exchange's value, fell sharply before trading was halted, including State Bank of India and mortgage lender HDFC.

In April, a sudden drop in Nifty futures sparked speculation of an erroneous trade, but the exchange said no errors had been spotted on its trading systems.