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National Market System Symbology Plan

Overview

The Nasdaq equities exchanges currently participate in the National Market System Symbology Plan for the selection and use of 1-5 character root symbols, as governed by the Intermarket Symbols Reservation Authority (ISRA).

Nasdaq is participating in an industry-wide effort to create a common suffix table for U.S. equity securities in an effort to reduce investor confusion and avoid processing risks. Nasdaq believes that all market participants benefit from a uniform symbology solution covering the root symbol for primary securities and suffices for all subordinate issue types. As members of ISRA, Nasdaq, Nasdaq BX and Nasdaq PSX will continue to work jointly with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), industry participants and related trade associations to develop a suffix plan that promotes fair competition, reduces programming and operational complexity, and upholds the interests of both listed issuers and market participants.

Find the latest information about ISRA and a copy of the NMS Symbology Plan on The Options Clearing Corporation’s (OCC) website by clicking here.

Nasdaq Equity Symbology Updates

New Technical Specifications

Both Nasdq and BX currently have fixed-length specifications, which limit the length of the total ticker symbol (root plus suffix) to 6 characters. As announced in ETA #2010–3 and DTN #2010-7, Nasdaq has introduced new symbology-compliant versions of order entry, clearing and market data technical specifications for both NASDAQ and BX, that will increase the total ticker symbol length to 8-characters. Please visit the NASDAQ Specifications page for details.

Key Dates

March and April 2010 – Nasdaq will release the symbology-compliant versions of the Nasdaq and BX data feeds in March and April 2010. Please refer to DTN #2010-7 for the release date for each direct data feed.

May 3, 2010 – Firms must transition from DROP 2.1 to DROP 2.2 by Monday, May 3, 2010, in order to facilitate clearing of all securities.

Options Symbology

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