Nasdaq takes some blame for 3-hour breakdown

A three-hour trading outage on the Nasdaq last week was partly the result of issues within the company's control, the Nasdaq OMX Group said Thursday.

In a statement, the company detailed some of its early findings from an internal review. The Nasdaq blamed "a confluence of unprecedented events" that overwhelmed the exchange's system for handling price information. It said the catalyst was a torrent of messages from a trading platform run by the New York Stock Exchange, Arca.

"NASDAQ OMX is deeply disappointed in the events of August 22," the statement said, "and our performance is unacceptable to our members, issuers and the investing public."

The outage cracked the midday calm of a quiet summer day on Wall Street, sending brokers and traders scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Suspicion immediately fell on high-speed trading. Continue reading "Nasdaq takes some blame for 3-hour breakdown"