The decision comes after Thursday's 7-percent fall at the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges triggered the mechanism for the second time this week, causing a knock-on effect across the world. China's trade suspension was followed by Wall Street sliding one percent and European stock markets slumping by two percent late Thursday afternoon.
China's circuit breaker mechanism was launched on January 1. Designed to prevent free falls in stock prices, the mechanism was tuned to activate when share prices changed by over five percent, suspending trade for 15 minutes. The circuit breaker was set to suspend trading for the remainder of the day in case of further price changes exceeding five percent after 14.45 local time, or in case of price swings above seven percent.
