Nasdaq Premarket Tech Glitch That Lasted Three Hours Is Resolved

(Bloomberg) -- Nasdaq Inc. said it has resolved a technology glitch that disrupted premarket trading for almost three hours on the exchange that hosts the likes of Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp.

“The Nasdaq Stock Market has resolved its earlier matching engine issues and all systems are operating normally,” a statement on the exchange website said. “Nasdaq will provide a full postmortem when available.”

A Nasdaq spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment outside regular US business hours.

Electronic exchanges use a matching engine to facilitate price discovery, according to a description on the website. The exchange earlier said that any unacknowledged orders on “Rash FIX” had been canceled back to customers. RASH — or routing and special handling — is technology for matching buy and sell orders.

The disruption was the second at Nasdaq in about three months. In December, Nasdaq faced a system error that impacted thousands of stock orders, leading some to be canceled and incorrect clearing information to be submitted. People with knowledge of the matter said at the time that the exchange operator was investigating an order-entry issue that caused inaccuracies and delays.

Disruptions on the US exchange were rare prior to December. Other examples include computer malfunctions in 2013 that froze thousands of securities listed on the Nasdaq for three hours. Before that, a squirrel chewed through a power line in Shelton, Conn. in 1994, disrupting electricity near Nasdaq’s main computer facility and indirectly shutting down trading for about 40 minutes.

On Monday, no trades were printed on Nasdaq Global Market between about 4:09 a.m. and 7:03 a.m. in New York, according to trading data on Bloomberg. Tickers of stocks including Nvidia and Apple were still printing trades via other platforms, including NYSE Arca Exchange. Typically, Nasdaq handles the bulk of trading volumes for shares listed on the tech-heavy index.

Other exchanges, including NYSE and NYSE Arca Equities earlier declared self-help against Nasdaq — a notification issued when another exchange is dealing with internal problems processing trades and orders are routed through alternate venues. Cboe Global Markets Inc. said its EDGX Equities exchange disabled routing to Nasdaq. 

Harry Heneage, a sales trader at Kepler Cheuvreux’s KCx in London, said that clients had mentioned issues trading pre-market in the US. Trading in Nasdaq 100 futures and options is operated by the CME Group, with Nasdaq 100 contracts up 1.1% at 7:47 a.m. in New York.

(Adds new Nasdaq statement about resolution of issue.)

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