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The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ) today announced the NASDAQ Closing Cross had a record day today as it was used to reconfigure the entire family of U.S. Russell indexes during their annual reconstitution.
A record 1.042 billion shares representing $11.2 billion were executed in the Closing Cross in 0.85 seconds across some 2,942 NASDAQ-listed stocks. This compares with 1.002 billion shares representing $9.3 billion executed in 2.9 seconds during Russell's annual reconstitution in 2009.
NASDAQ official closing prices (NOCPs) determined by the NASDAQ Closing Cross are widely used throughout the industry, including by Russell Investments, Standard & Poor's, Dow Jones, and mutual funds across the country.
"For the past seven years, market makers, index providers, mutual fund managers and the investing public have consistently demonstrated their confidence in NASDAQ’s leading price discovery facility,” said Eric Noll, Executive Vice President of Transaction Services, NASDAQ OMX. “The NASDAQ Closing Cross had another record-breaking performance during one of the heaviest trading sessions of year due to NASDAQ’s speed, market integrity and the reliability of our global technology platform.”
The Closing Cross brings together the buy and sell interest in specific NASDAQ, NYSE and NYSE Amex stocks and executes all shares for each stock at a single price, one that reflects the true supply and demand for these securities. All nationally-listed securities are eligible for the NASDAQ Closing Cross.
The Russell U.S. Indexes include only common stocks incorporated in the U.S., its territories, and certain countries or regions offering U.S. companies operational, tax, political or other financial benefits. All U.S. indexes are subsets of the Russell 3000E™ Index, which represents approximately 99% of the U.S. equity market. Russell U.S. Indexes allow investors to track current and historical market performance by specific market segment (large cap/small cap) or investment style (growth/value). Today, more than $3.9 trillion in assets are benchmarked to the Russell Indexes.
Russell reconstitution day is usually one of the most highly anticipated and heaviest trading days in the U.S. equity market as asset managers seek to reconfigure their portfolios to reflect the composition of Russell's U.S. indexes. The index reconstitution process was completed today and the newly reconstituted index membership will take effect before markets open on Monday, June 28, 2010.
For more information about the NASDAQ Closing Cross, please visit http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=OpenClose
