Trading suspension time frame on market announcements

I'm a little confused What is the trading suspension time frame on market sensitive anouncements, if any?

For example, when a company makes an announcement is there any delay to when you can start trading the stock after the information has been released?

I noticed this happen with Murchision Metals and Midwest today. The anouncement was made at 1:00pm but trading didn't start/open until 2:00pm! Why is this? Is it because the ASX regulations stipulate you must have time to digest the anouncement?

Is this a fixed time frame suspension for every anouncement or is it dependant on the stock?

Sorry for all the noob questions and thanks in advance

Depends on what the company request to the ASX, can be from 15 min to any amount of days. All depends on the Announcement/News. If its just a small announcement it can be suspended for about 15 min, if its more complex or something like a takeover or fundraising it can be days.

For any market sensitive announcement, traders that have a live news feed first see a 'notice received' message for that stock code and the stock goes into pre-open state (a bit like the open/close price match up) and so can't be traded.

A short time later (e.g. typically within the next 5 to 15 minutes) the headline for the announcement appears as well as the time at which the stock will resume. The resume time is typically about 10 or 15 minutes after the announcement is issued.

The actual body of the announcement is available shortly after the headline appears which gives traders about 10 minutes to read and digest the announcement before the stock resumes.

The resumption involves a price match up just like the open price match up.

To elaborate on the longer time frames as mentioned by TH - sometimes a stock instead of releasing news immediately will request a trading halt and nominate a time at which the trading halt will end by - typically two days after the trading halt request or when the news is available whichever is sooner.

Trading halts are typically requested because the company has market sensitive information but hasn't had time to finalise the details (e.g. finalising a merger negotiation, finalising the preparation and assessment of important drilling results, finalising a financing arrangement etc.). In the case of a trading halt, the bid/offer queue is cleared. At the time the stock releases the news then a resume time is nominated and the stock goes into a pre-open before the resume time with the usual price match up auction occurring.


Sometimes after a stock goes into a trading halt they might also go into suspension and be off the market for weeks or months or never come back on again. (warning to T+3'ers ;-) ).

cuttlefish said:

For any market sensitive announcement, traders that have a live news feed first see a 'notice received' message for that stock code and the stock goes into pre-open state (a bit like the open/close price match up) and so can't be traded.

A short time later (e.g. typically within the next 5 to 15 minutes) the headline for the announcement appears as well as the time at which the stock will resume. The resume time is typically about 10 or 15 minutes after the announcement is issued.

The actual body of the announcement is available shortly after the headline appears which gives traders about 10 minutes to read and digest the announcement before the stock resumes.

The resumption involves a price match up just like the open price match up.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the informative replies TH and cuttlefish
Where can I access live news feeds from? Do these feeds inform traders of the suspension time and re-open? I'm looking into Commsec PT will this inform me of live news? This would be a big help!