After reopening the LME for nickel trading this morning, following the bailout of Chinese commodity tycoon Xiang Guangda, the Chinese-owned (HKEX) exchange for forced to suspend trading soon after the open due to a "system error" which had led to some trades to be executed below the new price limits laid out by the exchange.

As Bloomberg reports, only 206 lots, or 1,236 tons of nickel, changed hands before the market stopped trading within seconds on Wednesday morning. Most of those trades took place at the limit price of $45,590 a ton. Several trades appeared to be at prices below the 5% limit.

"In some sense it went as expected, in that we all expected it to fall, but it was just a question of how quickly," Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets, said by phone from London.