A man takes a photo of a blank electronic stock board at a securities firm in Tokyo on Oct 1. — Eugene Hoshiko/AP
At 7:04am on an autumn Thursday in Tokyo, the stewards of the world’s third-largest equity market realised they had a problem.
A data device critical to the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s trading system had malfunctioned, and the automatic backup had failed to kick in. It was less than an hour before the system, called Arrowhead, was due to start processing orders in the US$6 trillion (RM24.95 trillion) equity market. Exchange officials could see no solution.
