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Nasdaq Error Results in Incorrect Quotes
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By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ
AP Business Writer
January 19, 2006, 1:19 PM EST
NEW YORK -- Computer problems at the Nasdaq Stock Market led to erroneous stock quotes on a number of major online financial news sites and brokerages Thursday, potentially leading individual investors around the world to believe that a stock was up when it was really down, or vice versa.
The errors that occurred Wednesday also prevented approximately 81,000 trades from being reported in the last minutes of the session, possibly leading to investors, both institutional and individual, from receiving the best listed price for their transactions.
The stocks affected are all listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but were traded electronically on the Nasdaq's computer platform. Nasdaq is responsible for reporting those trades to a consolidated listing service so investors can see the latest price for a given stock, whether it was traded on the floor of the NYSE or through Nasdaq's computers.
Due to the computer errors, however, individual investors using popular financial sites like MSN Money or Yahoo Finance were seeing inaccurate price swings Thursday. Customers of online brokerages E-Trade and Charles Schwab also saw erroneous stock quotes from their homepages, though it was unclear whether logged-in customers were receiving the same errors.
A Nasdaq spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the errors beyond a statement issued by Nasdaq Operations late Wednesday.
NYSE-listed companies, however, were calling the NYSE Thursday, asking why their quotes were wrong. At least a dozen listed companies called the exchange to complain, according to spokesman Rich Adamonis.
"There were no technical problems at the New York Stock Exchange," Adamonis said. "We're monitoring the incident."
The Nasdaq said a computer glitch occurred at approximately 5:50 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, when a number of transactions involving NYSE-listed stocks that had been made at 9:50 a.m. were reposted to the consolidated tape. That resulted in erroneous closing prices for a number of NYSE-listed stocks being reported, according to a notice issued by Nasdaq Operations late Wednesday.
It was not immediately known how many NYSE-listed stocks were affected by the computer errors. The Nasdaq's operations notice said 650 transactions were retransmitted, but The Associated Press' computer systems rejected 16,127 transactions that were retransmitted at that time. The rejected transactions involve 1,487 NYSE-listed stocks, including all 28 NYSE stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average.
The NYSE said it did not know how many listed companies were affected by the glitch.
A number of Web sites viewed by the AP Thursday -- including MSN Money, Yahoo! Finance and BigCharts.com, along with online brokers Charles Schwab and E-Trade -- showed erroneous price changes for a handful of NYSE stocks. Stock quote services on both NYSE.com and Nasdaq.com also posted incorrect price changes.
AMR Corp., for example, actually closed at $20.39 on Wednesday, but the retransmitted trades from earlier in the session had AMR closing at $18.79. In midmorning trading on Thursday, AMR was actually down 16 cents at $20.23, yet other sites listed that quote as being up $1.44 to $20.23.
