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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Feathered Propeller who wrote (18869)	5/28/1999 1:08:00 AM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

Nasdaq Approves Plan For Late Trading Reuters - 12:33 a.m. May 28, 1999 Eastern NEW YORK (Reuters) - Playing the stock market may become prime-time entertainment as soon as September, with investors trading shares of 3Com Corp. while watching ''Third Rock from the Sun'' on TV. Thursday, the board of the second-largest U.S. stock market's parent unanimously approved a plan for late trading four days a week. The extra session for the Nasdaq Stock Market would run from 5:30 p.m. to either 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., Monday through Thursday. The move comes as the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest stock market, compete with rival trading systems for the wave of orders placed over the Internet outside their current six-and-a-half-hour trading days. By some estimates, up to 40 percent of Internet stock orders are placed after the traditional market close at 4 p.m. ''Almost half of American households are invested in the stock market in one form or another, and that number could rise to a super majority in the next few years,'' Frank Zarb, chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the Nasdaq's parent, said at a news conference. ''The marketplace needs to restructure itself to accommodate that new interest.'' Initially, only stocks in the Nasdaq 100, the market's 100 biggest stocks, would be available for late trading. There have been concerns about the difficulty of trading less-liquid stocks -- those that are usually less in demand -- after regular hours, when there are far fewer market players. Nasdaq's market makers -- who facilitate trade by buying and selling stocks, profiting from the price difference -- would have the option of participating in the late session. All customer protections, such as regulations, would remain in force. All trades would be reported and displayed in real time and all investors would have equal access to trading during the session, Nasdaq said. ''Our initial cut was for the session to start by September, but the driving force is not the schedule,'' Zarb said. ''We should only do it when we feel confident that the quality of the market, its regulatory structure and its transparency are equal, or close to equal, to the (regular) trading period.'' Previously, the Nasdaq had said that a late session could come ''conceivably'' by July. Zarb said he would prefer the U.S. securities industry work together to resolve such issues so a late trading session could start ''with a unified look,'' which he said could take months. ''And we would be happy to play host to that process,'' he said. But if a rival trading system were to start a new late session aimed at small investors on the Internet, he said Nasdaq would speed up its plans. For instance, Eclipse Technology Inc. says it plans to start a 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. trading session on the Internet aimed at small investors sometime this summer. Island ECN Inc., the second-largest electronic stock trading system in the United States, already runs a late session that runs through 5:15 p.m. Eastern time. The closing data from the traditional session would be used as the official closing data, making things easier for mutual funds and newspapers. All the trades taking place in the late session would be calculated as part of the next day's data. The proposal still requires the approval of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt said the SEC supported later trading hours but that broker-dealers were obligated to inform investors about after-hours risks. ''Broker-dealers should inform retail investors in particular about after-hours liquidity and volatility conditions so investors can make an informed choice concerning whether their orders should be executed in the after-hours market,'' he said in a statement. Trading volume in after-hours sessions currently pales compared to volume during normal hours. One analyst estimates late-trading volume would account just 1 percent of U.S. daily volume. But the figure is expected to increase sharply, with a late session attracting small ''retail'' investors, whose stature on Wall Street has grown as people bypass brokers and trade from home computers. The current leader in after-hours trading is Instinet, owned by the global news company Reuters Group Plc. . It has traditionally focused on large, institutional investors but aims to bring small investors into the fold. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication and redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. o~~~ O