“Test” data pushed by Nasdaq gets published, creating stock quote surprise

Apparently, somebody didn't get the memo. On the afternoon of July 3, the Nasdaq stock exchange closed three hours early in advance of the Independence Day holiday. At that time, Nasdaq-in a test that had been announced to its data partners a week before-pushed out some manufactured stock quote data as part of a test of its systems. However, some of that data was apparently published inadvertently by multiple financial websites, including Google and Bloomberg.

The data errantly published was sent as part of a test of Nasdaq's UTP ("unlisted trading privileges") Quotation Data Feed, which serves up quotation data to a collection of market data vendors. "As part of its normal process, Nasdaq distributed test data and certain third parties improperly propagated the data," a Nasdaq spokesperson told Ars via e-mail. "Nasdaq is working with these third party vendors to resolve the matter."

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