The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) today announced the NASDAQ Closing Cross was used for the eighth consecutive year to reconfigure the entire family of U.S. Russell indexes during their annual reconstitution. In 1.1 seconds the NASDAQ Closing Cross executed approximately 750.8 million shares representing $10.6 billion across some 2,298 NASDAQ-listed stocks.
To see the top 10 crosses in terms of share volume, please visit http://media.globenewswire.com/cache/6948/file/10736.pdf. 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.
"The NASDAQ Closing Cross is a price discovery facility which has become an industry standard for index providers, mutual fund managers and the investing public who seek accurate closing prices in microseconds," said Eric Noll, Executive Vice President of Transaction Services,NASDAQ OMX. "Although this year we experienced a lower number of shares in the rebalance, we continued to witness the NASDAQ Closing Cross generate accurate closing prices thanks to our proven INET 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 Russell U.S. indexes are subsets of the Russell 3000™ Index, which represents approximately 98% 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/defensive/dynamic). 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 27, 2011.
For more information about the NASDAQ Closing Cross, please visit http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=OpenClose.