NASDAQ suffered a technical issue that froze quotes for stocks for many traders for 11 minutes yesterday, marking the second glitch in information flow on a major exchange in the first two days of 2013.
NASDAQ stock quotes appeared frozen to traders who rely on the NASDAQ data feeds known as the UTP SIP, prompting many to believe trading had been halted. The freeze continued for several minutes after the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released the notes of its meeting from the December 11-12 session, prompting greater confusion among traders. The release of the FOMC notes normally marks a busy time in trading.
‘The UTP SIP is investigating an issue with stale data on the UQDF and UTDF feeds across multiple channels,’ NASDAQ said in a notice at 1.42 pm EST yesterday. ‘The UTP SIP will advise when the issue is resolved.’ At 1.53 pm, NASDAQ said ‘the issue with the UQDF and UTDF feeds affecting multiple channels has been resolved. All systems are operating normally.’
At 1.50 pm, during the partial blackout, the FOMC notes were released and included news that FOMC participants were divided over whether to end the monthly bond purchases of $85 bn ‒ known as QE3 ‒ in the middle of this year or continue them beyond that date. The news affected stocks around the globe, lowering many share prices and ending a start-of-year rally on the expectation of less fiscal stimulus than earlier estimated.
During the frozen period, the NASDAQ Composite Index appeared completely unchanged in charts on the NASDAQ website, as if no trading were taking place. The ‘stale data’ affected major stocks such as Apple, Google, Netflix and others traded on NASDAQ.
The NASDAQ glitch was the second problem on a major exchange in the first trading days of the New Year, following a problem on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) that delayed a series of corporate announcements during the first trading hours of 2013.
The malfunction in the Regulatory News Service (RNS) of the LSE lasted until about 8.36 am on January 2, when more than 100 announcements were published in the space of less than a minute, according to RNS records. The RNS had stopped publishing releases between 5.00 am and 8.36 am. The LSE described the delay as a ‘technical glitch’.
