DTS to go live next week
A new trading system is set to go live on the Pakistan Stock Exchange on May 15, the national bourse said on Thursday. The planned rollout of the Designated Time Schedule (DTS), a trading and surveillance platform meant for securities listed on the PSX, follows the botched implementation of the same software back in October 2021. Speaking to Dawn on Thursday, Pakistan Stockbrokers Association Secretary General Bilal Farooq Zardi said he’s confident that the rollout of the new system will be seamless this time around. The representative body of stockbrokers mounted a fierce protest against the exchange’s first attempt to implement the DTS on the pretext that the system lacked even basic features at the time, which led to “frequent glitches” and reduced volume of traded shares in the country’s only stock exchange. “The latest effort has been collaborative. Market participants and the PSX have worked together to ensure its efficiency. We’ve had many error-free mock sessions on the new system,” he said. The PSX acquired the new system from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE), a related party, for Rs464.6 million, according to its latest financial accounts. It’s supposed to be the “safest and most advanced” system with the “utmost reliability, superior performance and low latency”.