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Nasdaq, NYSE consider data sharing deal to prevent trading outages

Nasdaq, NYSE consider data sharing deal to prevent trading outages

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Facebook Nasdaq NYC Stock

Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are currently in early talks over what would be an unprecedented partnership after the two leading US stock markets experienced recent halts in trading due to tech problems, The Wall Street Journal reports. The rival exchanges are currently considering a system that would allow each company to run a backup steam of stock-pricing data from the other in the event of an outage, the Journal says. Such an agreement would allow trading to continue as the affected company fixes whatever tech issue it's having at the time, thanks to help from the competing exchange.

The talks reportedly began following a September 12th meeting held by the Securities and Exchange Commission and involving the two equity markets. At the Washington DC The SEC has demanded changes meeting, the SEC expressed its concerns that the pair were too vulnerable to glitches and hackers. "The orderly functioning… and the robustness of our market infrastructure are vitally important to our nation's economy," said SEC Chairman Mary Jo White at the meeting, according to the Journal. The regulator also imposed a 60-day deadline on the two exchanges, calling on them each to deliver plans on how they'll address their technology problems.

The most notable tech outage — and the exact sort of scenario that regulators are trying to eliminate — came on August 22nd when a software connection problem stopped Nasdaq pricing data from being sent out and caused trading to shut down for three hours. In response, the NYSE temporarily halted trading as well. Last week, a problem stemming from a software update to the NYSE's data feeds caused a nearly 10-minute shutdown of the entire US options market.