Markets confused by glitch
NEW YORK — Shares of AMR Corp. closed up 16 cents at $20.55 Thursday.
Or were they up $1.84?
A computer glitch at the Nasdaq Stock Market left erroneous stock price swings on major online financial news Web sites and brokerage sites all day Thursday. While nearly impossible to assess the full extent of the damage, the technical snafu created incorrect price changes for approximately 1,500 stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange and American Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq confirmed.
Someone relying on Web sites for stock data on Thursday got the correct price of the stock in the current market, but the wrong change — for example, as in the case of AMR, up $1.84 instead of 16 cents.
The errors created the potential for investors using the erroneous information in deciding on a stock trade — someone seeing AMR up $1.84 could wonder whether the money-losing airline’s fortunes have improved, for example.
Nasdaq spokeswoman Bethany Sherman said the errors were confined to stocks listed on the NYSE and AMEX, which brokers and institutions can trade on Nasdaq’s electronic platforms as well as on the floor of the Big Board. Sherman said the stock market fixed the computer glitch.
Sherman said stock indexes and mutual fund net asset values, computed after the close of the market, were not affected by the problem.
Nasdaq is responsible for reporting NYSE-listed stock trades to a consolidated listing service so investors can see the latest price for a given stock, whether it was traded on the floor of the NYSE or through Nasdaq’s computers.
Due to the computer errors, however, individual investors using popular financial sites like MSN Money or Yahoo Finance were seeing inaccurate price changes Thursday. Customers of online brokerages E-Trade and Charles Schwab also saw erroneous stock movements on those companies’ home pages, though it was unclear whether logged-in customers got the same errors. A customer account at Ameritrade showed that broker’s real-time quotes were correct, while another logged-in account at Fidelity.com showed an incorrect price change.
Unless another glitch were to occur overnight, stock listings were expected to return to normal on Friday, given that the change in price in Friday’s trading would be based on Thursday’s closing price.
While the problem was due to Nasdaq’s computer error, NYSE-listed companies called the Big Board Thursday, asking why their quotes were wrong on many of the world’s financial Web sites. At least a dozen listed companies called the exchange to complain, according to spokesman Rich Adamonis.
“There were no technical problems at the New York Stock Exchange,” Adamonis said. “We’re monitoring the incident.”
According to an e-mail alert sent to Nasdaq customers late Thursday afternoon, a computer glitch occurred at approximately 5:50 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, when 16,669 transactions involving NYSE- and AMEX-listed stocks that had been made at 9:50 a.m. were reposted to the consolidated list. In many computer systems, those transactions overwrote the final closing price posted earlier that afternoon.