Canadian markets run by TMX Group close hours early, expected to resume Monday

CTV National News: Trading grinds to a halt A massive technical glitch forced the stock exchanges in Toronto and Montreal to shut down early in the afternoon. Jon Erlichman reports.

TORONTO -- Canada's largest stock exchange and other securities markets operated by TMX Group were shut down about two hours early Friday due to undisclosed technical problems.

"We have identified the issue and are working to rectify," the company said in a statement, without disclosing details.

"We apologize for the inconvenience. We expect to resume trading at regular hours on Monday, April 30, 2018."

It also said that closing stock prices would be issued Friday afternoon, to be used as the basis of trading when the markets reopen next week.

Besides the Toronto Stock Exchange, which primarily handles equities of some of Canada's biggest companies, the company also operates the TSX Venture Exchange, the TSX Alpha Exchange and the Montreal Exchange, which is Canada's largest market for trading derivatives.

The Canadian Securities Exchange, a much smaller operation under different ownership, was unaffected.

News of the unusual shutdown began to be distributed by TMX Group at about 2 p.m., a few minutes after the company became aware of the problem.

TMX announced at about 3 p.m. that it wouldn't re-open its markets for the remainder of the session, which normally ends at 4 p.m.

A spokeswoman for Toronto-based TMX Group said the company was investigating the cause of the disruption but would be confining its comments to its social media feed.