New York: The Nasdaq Stock Market (www.nasdaq.com) has applauded the decision of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve the pilot NASD alternative display facility (ADF) and looks forward to the 12 August 2002 open meeting of SEC.

At that meeting, SEC will consider the extent to which the preconditions of its approval order for Nasdaqs next-generation trading system, SuperMontage, have been met. As part of SECs approval of SuperMontage in January 2001, it was mandated that ADF be up and running before trading of real stocks could take place through Nasdaqs SuperMontage system.

Nasdaq will launch SuperMontage, as planned, on 29 July 2002 with 32 test securities. Market participants and data vendors have asked for test stocks in order to check their own internal systems and to provide real time securities data to pass down to their customers.

SuperMontage will redefines whats possible for a stock market by bringing new opportunities to investors, market participants, and companies, says Nasdaq president and deputy chairman Rick Ketchum. From a technology perspective, SuperMontage is ready for implementation and we will continue to work with our customers and vendors to ensure a smooth transition to the new platform once the SEC takes all necessary regulatory action for Nasdaq to launch SuperMontage.

SuperMontage is the latest example of the state-of-the-art products and services Nasdaq provides its customers at low costs. It was conceived to be the centre of liquidity in Nasdaq-listed securities. SuperMontage will offer the marketplace greater transparency, allowing participants to enter quotes and orders at multiple price levels; provide more choices in order display and execution; and provide a higher level of confidence for traders best execution responsibilities.

In the new SuperMontage marketplace, quotes and orders will go through single-computer architecture, adding speed and efficiency to the market. Since the implementation of decimalisation, there are fewer shares available at each price point. SuperMontage will make it easier for market participants to access depth of trading interest because of the systems five levels of displayed depth.

For the pilot, ADF will allow registered NASD market makers and electronic communications networks to publish quotations for, and report trades in Nasdaq securities.