Would you drive a car designed and built by Nasdaq OMX, NYSE Euronext or any other major stock exchange operator? It is, of course, a hypothetical question. But people might think twice before stepping into the driving seat given some recent glitches that have led to a spate of outages and brought into question the resiliency of their technology.

The London Metal Exchange, NYSE Liffe and the Chicago Board Options Exchange are just a handful of exchanges to have been hit by systems glitches in the last few months.