The ASX has communicated to all market participants of an industry-wide ASX settlement failure that occurred on Friday the 20th of December. This failure has meant that CHESS was not able to complete market settlement on Friday and has deferred settlement to Monday the 23rd of December. For those clients who had sell trades settling on Friday we have ensured those sale proceeds have been made available to you for trading on Monday. Stock delivery for clients who had buy trades settling will need to wait until Monday before the shares become available to sell. We apologise for any inconvenience this ASX outage has caused.
With a decade of record-low interest rates, retail investors have previously steered away from the bond market and have focused their capital on equity markets. Now that the Federal Reserve has announced a rise in rates, should we be worried? Considering the current level of global household debt, a small rise in rates could have a dramatic impact on the Australian and global economies.