Mondo Visione Worldwide Financial Markets Intelligence

FTSE Mondo Visione Exchanges Index:

Nasdaq Closing Cross Had Record Day For Second Year As It Calculated Russell Indexes

Date 28/06/2005

The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc. (NASDAQ®; NASDAQ: NDAQ) today announced the NASDAQ Closing Cross had a record day as it was used to calculate the entire family of Russell Indexes during their annual reconstitution on Friday, June 24th. A total of approximately 428.5 million shares representing $5.8 billion were executed in the Closing Cross across approximately all 3,200 NASDAQ stocks. Click here to see the top 10 crosses in terms of share volume. With total NASDAQ share volume of 3.04 billion, June 24 was the third most active trading day since April 18, 2001.

NASDAQ official closing prices (NOCPs) determined by the NASDAQ Closing Cross were used by Russell Indexes and mutual funds across the country.

“The Closing Cross has quickly established itself as the premier price discovery facility in the country,” said Chris Concannon, Executive Vice President of NASDAQ Transaction Services. “Its second consecutive record-setting performance during the calculation and reconstitution of Russell’s indexes validates the industry’s willingness to use the Closing Cross during one of the heaviest and most important trading days of the year.”

The Closing Cross brings together the buy and sell interest in specific NASDAQ stocks and executes all shares for each stock at a single price, one that reflects the true supply and demand for NASDAQ securities.

All NASDAQ securities are included in the NASDAQ Closing Cross. The Russell indexes contain 99 percent of the market capitalization of all publicly-traded companies and are used as benchmarks for more funds than any other U.S. index family. They have been the fastest growing suite of U.S. indexes since 1998 with more than $2.5 trillion in institutional assets benchmarked against them.

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 indexes. The index reconstitution process was completed Friday, June 24th, and the newly reconstituted index membership took effect when markets opened on Monday, June 27th.

NASDAQ has posted a spreadsheet showing all NASDAQ Official Closing Prices (NOCPs) determined by the Closing Cross.

For more information about the NASDAQ Closing Cross, please click here.