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)