(Bloomberg) — A Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. service that some dark pools need in order to function broke down twice Tuesday, hobbling part of the U.S. stock market.
The first outage in the Nasdaq TRF lasted from the start of trading at 9:30 a.m. through 9:42 a.m. New York time, according to spokesman Joseph Christinat. The second was from about 12:57 p.m. to 1:35 p.m., according to the exchanges website.
Systems like the Nasdaq TRF help knit together U.S. stock trading, which is distributed across more than 50 markets. Roughly a third of trading takes place off the public exchanges, on venues like dark pools that match trades in secret up until the point they are completed. Dark pools then have to report transactions to services like the Nasdaq TRF.
Any dark pool or alternative trading system that only uses the Nasdaq TRF might be unable to operate during a disruption.
