Pink Sheets Are Taking Obscure Shares to Web
By TERZAH EWING
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
One of the cobweb corners of the U.S. stock-trading world is finally getting wired: The Pink Sheets, of all things, are going online.
With roots back to the early 1900s, the Pink Sheets have for decades been the home of the market's most obscure and infrequently traded stocks. The printed listings of thousands of stocks, many of them too small to get a listing on the Nasdaq Stock Market or the exchanges, got their name because of the color of paper on which the stock prices are printed.
The listings are Wall Street's equivalent of transistor radios in the Web-TV age. But starting as early as Friday, stock quotations for Pink Sheets issues will be posted at www.otcquote.com, a subscribers-only Web site.
The closely held New York-based National Quotation Bureau, which puts out the Pink Sheets listings, created a screen -- in bright pink, naturally -- that will give subscribers quotes, market-maker phone numbers and other stock information for these over-the-counter issues.
Traders still won't be able to buy and sell the approximately 3,600 Pink Sheet stocks without a phone call; online execution isn't in the cards for the system. But up-to-the-second prices are a step forward for the Pink Sheets, whose stocks have a reputation for opaque prices and thus manipulation and other dangers to investors. ...
See interactive.wsj.com or #reply-11138011 for further details.
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