More NASDAQ Stocks Phased into its Market Close Order Facility
New York, NY The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc. ("NASDAQ®"; OTCBB: 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 26 th , following its launch on March 29 th with two test securities and the phasing in of 20 other NASDAQ-100 Index securities on April 12 th and 19 th : 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 www.NASDAQ.com or the NASDAQ NewsroomSM at www.nasdaq.com/newsroom.
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