The Australian share market has lost ground during a day plagued by technical glitches that delayed the market open and eventually forced a premature end to equities trading.

The benchmark ASX/S&P200 was down 1.9 points, or 0.04 per cent, at 5,294.8 at 1406 AEST when trade was halted by market operator ASX and ultimately abandoned for the day.

The All Ordinaries was down three points, or 0.06 per cent, at 5,393.7 points when the halt came, the result of repeated technical problems that forced the cancellation of some transactions and narrowed trade of the full market to a window of less than an hour.

The share market did not kick off until 1130 AEST on Monday, an hour and a half after it was due to open.

Volume for the day was light with 1.03 billion securities traded for a value of $1.3 billion.

The ASX announced it would close the exchange at 1537 AEST on Monday with all shares only able to be traded for just 57 minutes.

The exchange operator initially delayed opening by an hour and a half until 11:30 AEST due a technical issue with a function that allows it to manage individual shares on its Nasdaq OMX equity trading platform.

CommSec market analyst Steven Daghlian said due to the delays and uncertainty trade volumes were about 20 per cent of the share value traded the previous Monday.

“It’s been interrupted trade throughout the day so that’s kept the value and volume very light today,” he said.

“From the ASX200 as an index, it’s just below 5,300 points still. So it’s been pretty quiet overall.

Company news was also sparse.

Among stocks to move was livestock shipping group Wellard, which rose six cents or 25.5 per cent to 29.5 cents after announcing a refinancing deal under which Chinese textile group Fulida will become its second-largest shareholder.