Jakarta stock mart starts fully automated trading

Jakarta stock mart starts fully automated trading

JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) commenced full
automatic trading yesterday, marking the start of a new era in
the country's capital market history.

The introduction of fully automatic trading coincided with the
move of the exchange's operations to new premises on Jl.
Sudirman, South Jakarta.

JSX President Hasan Zein said that the trading automation
marked a big step forward in the development of the Indonesian
capital market, billed as the most promising market in Asia.

He said that the automation would enable the exchange to
handle 50,000 transactions per day as compared to a mere 5,000
transactions per day under the manual system.

The new trading system will also enable investors and brokers
to monitor the JSX Composite Index, which will be automatically
adjusted to reflect price fluctuations.

"The index quotation will be displayed on the index monitoring
board every five minutes," he said. "Under the manual system, the
index was calculated at the end of the trading session."

Hasan said that the introduction of automated trading would
not only improve trading liquidity but would also improve public
confidence in the future development of the country's capital
market.

"The improvement of trading liquidity will make the exchange
more attractive to both domestic and foreign investors as they
will face no problems in cashing in their stocks," he said.

He said that the automation would also enable investors to
carry out remote or long-distance trading, as buy and sell orders
can be placed through computers off the trading floor.

"We hope remote trading can be introduced within the next six
months," he said.

The automated trading system uses Hewlett Packard 9000
computer hardware, while its software is the Automated Securities
Trading System produced by the Financial Software Development
Company of Hong Kong. (hen)