Adventures in Tech Support, LSE Edition

And you thought your company's tech support was bad. Just check out the London Stock Exchange's incident communication website for this morning:

At 9:15 London time, connectivity was "suspended" and no orders could be entered or deleted.

Fifty minutes later, at 10:05, connectivity was still suspended, and as a stopgap the LSE decided to move to an auction system.

At 11:45, connectivity was re-enabled for the auction system, but still no electronic execution or continuous trading.

The last update was at 1:13pm -- four hours after the problem arose. "We are continuing to establish connectivity with our customers," it says. "A further update will be provided shortly."

Still no indication of what went wrong, or when continuous trading might resume.

And all this on the first day of trading after Fannie and Freddie were rescued.

Before trading was suspended, the LSE Group was trading at 815.50 pence per share on its own exchange. I have a suspicion that when trading restarts, that price will be rather lower.

Update: The latest, at 2:20pm, is a classic of its kind:

We are continuing to establish connectivity with our customers. This process is taking longer than expected.

Update 2: Connectivity is due to come back at 3:15pm, seven hours after it was lost, "but no electronic execution will occur until the uncrossing and commencement of continuous trading".

Update 3: Trading will resume at 4:00pm, giving market participants half an hour before the market closees at 4:30. Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose.

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