Nasdaq limits data changes ahead of Y2K

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Monday December 27, 7:38 pm Eastern Time

Nasdaq limits data changes ahead of Y2K

WASHINGTON, Dec 27 (Reuters) - The Nasdaq Stock Market said on Monday that it will not make any data changes such as initial public offerings or name changes for stock and debt issues and market participants from Monday, Dec. 27 through Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 under a plan to prevent computer problems related to the new year.

``This data freeze will be imposed to minimize the activity in the system during the brief transition period to the new year,'' said Gregor Bailar, executive vice president and chief information officer of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) -- parent of The Nasdaq Stock Market. ``For us, there's no such thing as being over-prepared.''

Many computer systems were programmed to read only the last two digits of the year, meaning that some computers would read the year 2000 as the year 1900. This has caused many industries to redo the programming of these systems to fix what has been called the ``Millennium Bug.''

Nasdaq, which lists nearly 5,000 companies, and the Over the Counter Bulletin Board will not have any updates for new initial public offerings, additional listings, name changes, symbol changes, and the addition of market makers. The National Association of Securities Dealers will not add any new members during this time.

Nasdaq will permit deletions of data such as stocks being acquired or deletions of NASD members or market makers. Nasdaq said it will also permit additions to the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board resulting from a nasdaq delisting.

-- (in@the.news), December 28, 1999

Answers

Nice of them to give some notice here... This couldn't be reactionary to a related problem, could it? I'm not knowledgable about Nasdaq's system concerns, but this sounds kinda far fetched to this layperson.

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 28, 1999.

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