Warner: SEC should report to Congress on Nasdaq glitch

{mosads}On Thursday, the nation’s second-largest stock exchange screeched to a halt shortly after noon. The exchange blamed a technical glitch with one of its data feeds, preventing all investors from receiving timely stock quotes. The exchange, which trades some of the nation’s highest profile stocks such as Apple and Google, was down for a little more than three hours before trading resumed.

So far, the economic damage is sparse, as stocks continued to trade on other exchanges without a major downturn and the Nasdaq actually turned upwards when trading resumed. But the outage drew significant attention in Washington, as even the president was briefed on the problem when it occurred.

Warner pointed out in his letter that this is the second high-profile glitch to impact the Nasdaq in recent months, highlighting the botched initial public offering of Facebook stock, which was also beset by technical woes.

“When an exchange fails to function properly, as was apparent on August 22, this type of event impedes our economy by eroding consumer confidence,” he wrote.

For her part, White said after the glitch was resolved that the SEC is determined to advance new market safeguards tied to stock exchanges. She added that in addition to moving ahead previously proposed rules on this matter, she also planned to meet with the heads of major exchanges and other big market players to discuss what else could be done to address the issue.

In addition to Warner, the banking panels in both chambers of Congress were tracking the outage Thursday. However, it is not apparent yet if lawmakers will decide to conduct a more formal investigation into the issue.