New trading hours for Indonesian bourse

The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) is planning to "rehearse" new trading hours at the beginning of February to ensure it can change to the new hours can be completed by the middle of this year, a top executive says.

IDX president director Ito Warsito said Wednesday that the "rehearsal" would be organized over the weekend sometime around the end of February or early March, and that it would involve brokers, the Central Securities Depository and the stock market clearing house.

"The trial is aimed at understanding potential technical glitches because trading activities are related to computer systems," he said in Jakarta.

In January the stock exchange unveiled a plan to open trading 30 minutes earlier to be nearer to trading hours of neighboring countries so that investors could focus on the country's stock market instead of transferring their funds from other markets to the country. The bourse currently opens at 9:30 a.m. and closes at 4 p.m.