More NASDAQ Stocks Phased into its Market Close Order Facility
NEW YORK, April 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc. ("NASDAQ(R)"); (BULLETIN BOARD: NDAQ) has phased in ten additional NASDAQ-
listed securities into the NASDAQ Closing Cross, a centralized order facility
that provides a highly transparent and accurate market close for NASDAQ
securities.
The following securities -- part of the NASDAQ-100 Index -- were phased into
the Closing Cross on April 26th, following its launch on March 29th with two
test securities and the phasing in of 20 other NASDAQ-100 Index securities on
April 12th and 19th: Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), Apollo Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOL), Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Invitrogen Corporation
(NASDAQ:IVGN), Mercury Interactive Corporation (NASDAQ:MERQ), Nextel
Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTL), Paychex, Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYX), Ryanair
Holdings plc (NASDAQ:RYAAY), Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation (NASDAQ:SSCC),
and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW).
"The Closing Cross has performed very well with NASDAQ-listed securities," said
Adena Friedman, Executive Vice President of NASDAQ Corporate Strategy and Data
Products. "This is the first time in the U.S. that an electronic closing
process is fully transparent to all investors, allowing them to come together
and discover a single price that reflects true supply and demand. The new
NASDAQ close is an innovation for the U.S. markets in that it offers superior
transparency leading into the close and the opportunity for everyone to use
that insight to meet their trading and investment needs." As part of the Closing Cross, NASDAQ disseminates detailed information about
order imbalances and likely clearing prices for the ten minutes leading up to
the close. At 4:00, the NASDAQ Market Center then executes the market-
on-close, limit-on-close orders, and offsetting orders at a single price that
allows the maximum number of shares to execute. That closing price is then
used as the industry benchmark for index valuations, derivative trades, and
mutual fund net-asset-valuations.
Subsequent groups of securities to be phased in will be announced at a later
date. For more information about the NASDAQ Closing Cross, and to view
statistics on how the cross has performed in NASDAQ's pilot securities, please
visit http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader/openclose/openclose.stm - ncc.
Prior to the launch of the Closing Cross, the NASDAQ Official Closing Price
(NOCP) determined closing prices. The NOCP was launched in April 2003 and was
widely adopted by the industry as the benchmark price for the market close.
For more information about the NASDAQ Closing Cross, please visit
http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader/openclose/ccfactsheet.pdf NASDAQ is the largest U.S. electronic stock market. With approximately 3,300
companies, it lists more companies and, on average, trades more shares per day
than any other U.S. market. It is home to category-defining companies that are
leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail,
communications, financial services, transportation, media and biotechnology. NASDAQ is the primary market for trading NASDAQ-listed stocks. Approximately
51% of NASDAQ-listed shares traded are reported to NASDAQ systems. For more
information about NASDAQ, visit the NASDAQ Web site at http://www.nasdaq.com/
or the NASDAQ Newsroom(SM) at http://www.nasdaqnews.com/. DATASOURCE: NASDAQ CONTACT: Wayne Lee of NASDAQ, +1-301-978-4875 Web site: http://www.nasdaqnews.com/ http://www.nasdaq.com/
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