Business Glossary

the first and world's largest electronic stock market listing more than 3,200 companies, operated by Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., which is partially owned by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) . Nasdaq is the principal home of top U.S. growth companies as well as international companies trading shares in the United States. In 2004, it announced an initiative to encourage companies to list on both Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange . Nasdaq real-time quotes are transmitted through an international computer and telecommunications network to more than 1.3 million users in 83 countries. The NASDAQ-100 Index and the NASDAQ Composite Index are the best known of the Nasdaq indices. About 300 market makers use their own capital to buy and sell Nasdaq securities, then redistribute the stock as needed. The Nasdaq network also connects alternative trading systems such as electronic communications networks (ECNs), which enable investors to trade with each other. ECNs operate as order-matching mechanisms and do not maintain inventories of their own. Order-entry firms enter and execute orders through Nasdaq on behalf of retail, institutional customers, and other broker-dealers, but they do not maintain buy or sell price quotes in Nasdaq-listed securities. In 2004, Nasdaq bought Brut Llc, operator of Brut Ecn and in 2005, the stock market announced it was buying Instinet Group and planned to integrate Instinet's Inet ECN into its operations. The Nasdaq Stock Market is composed of two separate markets. The Nasdaq National Market is the market for Nasdaq's largest and most actively traded securities, among them Microsoft and Intel. The Nasdaq SmallCap Market lists emerging growth companies that move up to the Nasdaq National Market as they become established. In 2004, Nasdaq launched The Nasdaq Market Center, a new high-capacity trading platform for NYSE, AMEX, and Nasdaq securities, including ETFs, which incorporates all its existing trading systems. The new platform includes Supermontage, which was a new generation system when introduced in 2002. Trading hours: 9:30 A.M. to 4 P.M. and 4 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. (Nasdaq Stock Market); 3:30 A.M. to 9 A.M. (Nasdaq International Market); 8 A.M. to 9:30 A.M. and 4 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. (SelectNet). www.nasdaq.com.