Price glitch leaves tech giants stocks fixed at $123.47

In after-hours trading on the eve of the US Independence Day, a stock market data error set major tech companies like Apple, Google and Amazon listed on the Nasdaq exchange to the same share price of $123.47 late on Monday, that saw Amazon going down 87 per cent and Facebook game maker Zynga up a massive 3,292 per cent.

As a result of the glitch, which Nasdaq said was caused by "faulty test data being improperly disseminated by third-party vendors", several stocks briefly showed their price to be $123.47.

Prices on Nasdaq's official website appeared unaltered but the issue was replicated across financial data services including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Google Finance and Yahoo Finance which displayed the incorrect price change, Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The glitch made Apple appear down by 14.3 per cent.

Nasdaq said the glitch did not affect any market trading, including after hours.

However, traders in Hong Kong were quoted as saying they saw a handful of trades reported at those prices, although many deals were subsequently cancelled.

At the $123.47 price, Microsoft jumped 79.1 per cent, which would value the company at nearly $1 trillion.

For tech giant Amazon which had an opening price of $972.79 a share, the error had a catastrophic effect on the appearance of its market cap while other companies like struggling Facebook game maker Zynga saw their stock price soaring by a massive 3,292 percent.

If the declines had actually occurred, it would have knocked $104 billion off the market value of Apple, the world's most valuable stock. Amazon's market cap would have dropped $396 billion, the report added.

In a statement to the Financial Times, Nasdaq said the culprit was "improper use of test data" that was picked up by third party financial data providers. The exchange said it was "working with third party vendors to resolve this matter."

--IANS

tony/na/bg