������̳

The Australian share market was closed for most of Monday due to a technical glitch.

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) said the problem was a software issue that created inaccurate market data.

The markets had a strong opening before the ASX announced trading had been paused mid-morning.

The shutdown is the most serious since the exchange experienced a hardware failure in 2016.

Australia was one of 15 countries that signed a new Asian trade deal on Sunday - the world's biggest trade pact.

ASX was introducing a new trading system for its equity market, which it has been testing for over a year.

“What happened today does not meet the high standards of operations and system reliability that we set ourselves, and that our customers should rightly expect of us. We apologise for the disruption,” ASX said in a statement.

The problem is expected to be fixed overnight, and the exchange will reopen at 10AM tomorrow.

Other exchanges in the Asia-Pacific region have also suffered from technical problems over the past few months.

On 1 October, a technical problem forced a full-day trading halt on Japan's stock exchanges, including the leading Nikkei 225 index.

In August, the New Zealand stock exchange was knocked offline for several days due to a cyber-attack.