The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) on Wednesday afternoon issued a note to traders stating that trading had been halted as a result of “intermittent disconnects across all markets and services.”

The JSE’s systems was back online at around 15h30 after the exchange experienced connection glitches, which saw its clients losing about one hour of trading time.

“Clients are advised that due to intermittent disconnects and inconsistent market data delivery all active markets will be halted at 14:30 whilst the team investigates the issue further. We apologise for the inconvenience caused,” the JSE announced.

Africa’s largest stock market – which lists over 300 companies – further advised its clients to review their positions and continue trading with caution following the incident.

The JSE noted at the time that although it was investigating an extension to trade to make up for the delay, consultations with membership advisory committees found it to be unnecessary.

Founder of Just One Lap Simon Brown tells Moneyweb that although the one hour halt to trading is not ideal, he doubts the incident will have damaging repercussions for clients.

“They were said to be closed for an hour which is not too bad… It’s never ideal, the markets should be opened from 9am until 5pm. You should be able to buy and sell at any point in the eight hour trading day.”

“An hour is not great – never is – in fact it reflects poorly on the exchange but market participants could also still trade on A2X because that exchange was still operating and many of the bigger stocks are listed there as well. So market participants weren’t really prejudiced by being shut for an hour,” Brown adds.