The Australian market looks set to open flat following a troublesome day on the exchange with the ASX suffering technical hitches that seriously interfered with trading.

The SPI is trading at 5266, down 2 points

On Monday, the Australian share market lost ground during a day plagued by technical glitches that delayed the market open and eventually forced a premature end to equities trading.

ASX chief executive Dominic Stevens apologised for a chaotic day on the exchange, saying a hardware failure sparked a chain of problems that interrupted and ultimately ended trading prematurely.

"What happened today does not meet the high standards of operations and systems reliability that we set ourselves and that our customers should rightly expect of us," Mr Stevens said in a statement on Monday evening.

The ASX was forced to delay the start of trade until 1130 AEST and halted trade shortly after lunch before announcing it would close the exchange for the day at 1537 AEST.

Meanwhile, in economic news, the Reserve Bank of Australia releases the minutes of its September board and rate setting meeting. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Bank's business sales indicator for August is due out.

In equities news, TPG Telecom and New Hope Group are expected to release full- year results.

Key Numbers

• The SPI is trading at 5266, down 2 points
• AUD +0.6% to 75.35 US cents
• On Wall St, Dow flat, S&P 500 flat, Nasdaq -0.2%
• In New York, BHP +1.7%, Rio +3%
• In Europe, Stoxx 50 +1.1%, FTSE +1.5%, CAC +1.4%, DAX +1%
• Spot gold +0.3% to $US1314.05 an ounce
• Brent crude +0.7% to $US46.07 a barrel
• LME aluminium +0.7% at $US1583 a tonne

What’s on today

RBA Sept board meeting minutes, ABS house prices Q2

The post Morning market update 20 September, 2016 appeared first on Market Pulse.