Nasdaq Gets an Extension On Its Arithmetic Project
The average stock trader can't figure out a way to convert stock prices like 9-11/16 into dollars and cents--and, apparently, neither can the Nasdaq stock market. At least not by July 3.</br></br>So Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. is going to give them another month to look at their math and submit a plan for converting from fractions to decimals.</br></br>The SEC gave the nation's equities markets until April 14 to agree on a plan. The original deadline was to be Monday. But regulators did not change the July 3 target date for the markets to actually start using the penny quotations.</br></br>Frank G. Zarb, chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers, which owns the market, said in a letter to the SEC this week that the Nasdaq would not be ready to implement decimals until 2001 because of the explosion of transactions in the technology-heavy market.</br></br>In the past year, the number of daily transactions on the Nasdaq has more than doubled to a high of 2 billion, while the number of quote updates has tripled to a record 4.95 million.