Nasdaq Glitch Prompts Trading Halt in Some Markets
The widely tracked Nasdaq Composite Index froze for nearly an hour Tuesday after Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. experienced problems transmitting data for stock-market indexes, the latest in a series of technical problems besetting Nasdaq.</br></br>Exchange officials blamed Tuesday's index outage on "a human error" rather than a computer glitch. Traders said the impact to the broader market was minimal, despite trading halts for some options contracts linked to the indexes.</br></br>The episode, however, deepened questions around the stability of critical market systems after a succession of failures in data feeds - including two other breakdowns in Nasdaq-operated systems - repeatedly knocked out trading over the last two months.</br></br>"One time is a random event, the second time it may be a coincidence and the third time is proof of weakness," said Ophir Gottlieb, managing director with LiveVol Inc., which analyzes options markets. "It appears Nasdaq has some serious issues with their technology and they may be unable to consistently deliver market data over a long period of time."</br></br>The Securities and Exchange Commission has been in contact with "market participants" and is monitoring developments around Tuesday's issue, which is standard practice for the regulator, an SEC spokesman said.