Australian Stock Exchange operator ASX Group stopped market trading last week due to technical problems, leaving brokers and CFD traders furious during a period of extreme market turbulence.

The Australian Securities Exchange reported a 9% rise in the total value of all CFD trades to $371.6 million in August, during which 16.3 million contracts were traded.

Britain was the first to ban investors from taking short positions on banking and financial institutions’ shares last week and was followed on Friday by bans in the US sharemarkets.