This paper examines the effectiveness of trading halts and performance of different types of investors during halts in an Asian emerging equity market. We use trade-by-trade data provided by the Stock Exchange of Thailand between January 1999 and December 2007. The transaction data enables us to closely analyze return, volatility and trading activities around the halts and to investigate trading behavior of investors around halts. Our results suggest that trading halts improve the efficiency of the market by reducing the information asymmetry and stabilizing the market. Trading halts serve as devices to facilitate price discovery process by allowing investors opportunity to adjust their trading interests and react the the material information. Our findings show that price return and volatility tend to reverse to their normal trading periods in a short period of time. However, high trading volume appears before and after halts but gradually decays within three days after resumption of trades. Another essential result providing implication for policymaker reveals that long duration of halts may cause higher volatility than short duration ones. Moreover, the evidence discloses that domestic investors trade at better prices than foreign investors around trading halt periods. Retail domestic investors trade at the most favorable price than institutional domestic and foreign investors. Retail investors follow contrarian trading strategy by buying low and selling high.