Futures to midnight

Press, 30 November 1989, Page 31

Futures to midnight

NZPA-AAP Sydney Trading on the Sydney Futures Exchange was extended to midnight yesterdy (2 a.m. today, N.Z. time), the exchange said. Initially only the 10year bond contract is being traded between 4.45 p.m. and midnight by means of the Sydney Computerised Overnight Market (Sycom). Sycom is based on a net- . work of personal computers linked by telephone to a host computer which would automatically execute trades on a price and time priority basis, the exchange said. Trading on the exchange under the open-outcry system ended at 4.30 p.m. Sycom was the most costeffective means of extending trading hours in order to satisfy global demand for Australian contracts, the exchange’s chief executive, Mr Les Hosking, said. Despite successful experiments with extended floor trading, the cost of keeping the facility open made it impractical as a long-term solution to the problem of meeting demand for extended hours, Mr Hosking said. . He emphasised that elecitronic trading would *not rethe open-outcrftjystem.