Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)

The Australian Securities Exchange is Australia’s primary securities exchange, sometimes referred to outside of Australia as the Sydney Stock Exchange. ASX is home to some of the world’s leading resource, finance, and technology companies.

Homepage

Currency: Australian Dollar (AUD)

Holiday Calendar
Trading Hours

Trading Summary

For information about the ASX, see their official Corporate Overview page.

Order Types

• Limit Day
• Fill or Kill (FOK)
• Immediate or Cancel (IOC)

Basic Market Rules

• Lot Size: min. 1; max. 999,000,000
• Tick Size: varies by price, as follows:

• Short Sale Rules: short sales must be declared and are only permitted where a locate for the shares has been obtained. Naked short selling is prohibited.
• Circuit Breakers: although the ASX has not established fixed thresholds for circuit breakers or trading halts, trading in a company’s shares may be halted from time to time for market-sensitive announcements or at the request of the company.

Auction Mechanisms

Open

The opening auction procedure begins at 10:00 AM and lasts for about 10 minutes. Opening prices are calculated during this phase. Securities open in five groups, according to the starting letter of their ASX code:

• Group 1 10:00:00 am +/- 15 secs 0-9 and A-B, e.g. ANZ, BHP
• Group 2 10:02:15 am +/- 15 secs C-F, e.g. CPU, FXJ
• Group 3 10:04:30 am +/- 15 secs G-M, e.g. GPT
• Group 4 10:06:45 am +/- 15 secs N-R, e.g. QAN
• Group 5 10:09:00 am +/- 15 secs S-Z, e.g. TLS

Close

The closing price is defined by the following closing auction mechanism.

Auction means an auction conducted in a Trading Platform in respect of Qualifying Bids or Offers pursuant to the following process:

• a) The Priority Bid is paired with the Priority Offer so that either the Bid or the Offer is fully satisfied;
• b) A new priority of Bids and Offers is established, deducting the quantity of Products paired under point a);
• c) The pairing and re-establishment of priority set out in point a) and b) are repeated until the Priority Bid is below the Priority Offer;
• d) All paired Bids and Offers are then matched at the Equilibrium Price;
• e) Any Bids or Offers which have not been matched at the completion of the process described in point b) will be carried through to the next Session State

Note: any order sent during the closing auction must be within 12% of the theoretical auction price. Otherwise, it will get cancelled automatically as a result of the exchange’s fat finger check.

Auction Periods

1. Pre-CSPA (16:00 – 16:10): During this period:

• Bids and Offers may be entered, amended, or cancelled in the Trading Platform
• Bids and Offers remaining in the Trading Platform from the previous Session State may be amended or cancelled
• Bids and Offers remaining in the Trading Platform at the commencement of the Session State retain their ranking in Price/Time Priority
• No Bids or Offers will be matched
• Allowable trades may be reported

As of trade date Friday, October 29, 2021, we made changes to the close auction order acceptance times for Australian Equities Exchange.

Orders will now be accepted from 04:00:01 P.M. to 04:09:00 P.M. Australian Eastern Daylight Time. This change is thirty-five (35) seconds earlier than before, and is being done to improve fill rates during the close auction [*last update November 18, 2021].

Additionally, and as a result of the changes done for trade date October 28, 2021, the delays at the open and close times are almost entirely gone.

2. CSPA (Closing Single Price Auction) (16:10-16:12 – random time +/- 60 seconds): During this period:

• An Auction is conducted on commencement of the Session State
• Auction Imbalance Orders are matched with other Orders at the end of the Auction following the transition of the Pre-CSPA Session State to the CSPA Session State
• No Bids and Offers may be entered, amended, or cancelled in the Trading Platform
• Qualifying Bids and Offers that have not been matched in the Auction will be carried through to the next Session State in Price/Time Priority
• No trades may be reported

Order Types: traders can enter Limit orders to participate in the auction.

Additional Info

Australian Equities Broker Migration

 As of Wednesday, October 27, 2021, in Australia, which will be Tuesday, October 26, 2021, in North America, we are migrating to a new broker for the Australian Equities Exchange, and expect to see several improvements, including:

• Increasing the global orders per side restriction from 15 to 30.
• Gateway fee reduction to 1.3 BP from 3.0 BP.
• The ability to send CHI-X orders as of 10:00:00 A.M., even on symbols not open yet on ASX.
• Addition of ASX CentrePoint and CHIX Midpoint orders. These will be new destinations on Ppro8.

In addition to the improvements above, this migration introduces a new compliance check:

• Untraded Cancellations limit: We will now have a limit of “untraded cancellations” per trader and symbol. For most symbols the limit is set to 10 untraded cancellations, however, this limit is managed by our broker and may be lower on some symbols. Once the limit is breached, all new “Limit Day” orders will go through a manual approval process, which may slow down future orders.
• Orders that go through manual approval will show as “pending” in the history log, and traders will not be able to cancel or modify these orders while they are being reviewed by the broker. The broker can then approve or reject those orders. This process can take seconds.

Finally, please be aware of the following notes:

1. It is important to mention that cancelling the ASX CentrePoint or CHI-X Midpoint will not be counted as “untrade cancellations.”
2.  Any Fill Or Kill (“FOK”) or Immediate Or Cancel (“IOC”), and, ASX CentrePoint and CHI-X Midpoint, will not be slowed down for manual approval.
3. Traders that want to close a position fast and suspect, or know, that they have already hit the cancellation limit, and their orders are being slowed down for manual review, are suggested to use FOK or IOC orders to avoid having problems with the manual review of their orders.

It’s important that all traders and managers should arrive early for the day of the release to review their keyboard setup. API users should review their code as some orders may change names.

Order Per Side Restrictions (2021/01/12)

Effective trade date 2021-01-12, we will be reducing the trader order per side restriction to 2 orders per gateway + destination, down from the current 3.

This is being done while we continue to work with our broker to increase the global maximum order per side restriction (currently set to 15).

We hope to provide a further update on these efforts in the near future!

Fee Reduction

ASX Market Access [12/09/2020]

We have made improvements to the handling of the Global Orders per Side restriction to minimize the impact on active symbols. If there is a stock that you feel needs or warrants a higher limit, you can submit a mojo.

Also, our broker is now able to offer trading in cannabis-related companies —something that was previously unavailable. You can see the list of available ASX cannabis symbols here (only for clients).

For offices that are interested in trading Australia, you will need to submit a mojo ticket first. In the ticket, please include details about your traders’ past experience trading in Live on the ASX market, including

Financial News/Research

• The Australian: Business Section
• The Australian Financial Review: Business Section
• Sydney Morning Herald: Markets Section
• Yahoo!Finance Australia

Market Data

• ASX Market Data

See Also

• Market Guides