NEW YORK - Nasdaq was investigating connectivity issues on Monday morning after trading on its exchange was disrupted for almost three hours.
“The Nasdaq Stock Market continues to investigate issues with its matching engine at this time,” according to a statement on the exchange website. “Nasdaq has determined root cause and is working to full resolve the issues. Additionally, any unacknowledged orders on Rash FIX have been canceled back to customers.”
RASH, or routing and special handling, is technology for matching buy and sell orders. The statement did not provide details on whether trading was impacted. A Nasdaq spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular US business hours.
Nasdaq Inc announced later that a technology glitch had disrupted premarket trading for almost three hours and had been resolved.
“The Nasdaq Stock Market has resolved its earlier matching engine issues and all systems are operating normally,” it said in a statement on its website. “Nasdaq will provide a full postmortem when available.”
No trades had printed on Nasdaq Global Market since about 4.09 am in New York (4.09pm in Thailand), according to trading data on Bloomberg. Tickers of shares including Nvidia Corp. and Apple Inc. were still printing trades via other platforms, including NYSE Arca Exchange.
Typically, Nasdaq handles the bulk of trading volumes. Other exchanges, including NYSE and NYSE Arca Equities 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 had 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 0.7% at 6.25am in New York.
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, Connecticut, in 1994, disrupting electricity near Nasdaq’s main computer facility in Trumbull and indirectly shut down trading for about 40 minutes.