New York, N.Y.—-The NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc. (NASDAQ^®) today announced that it has completed the implementation of all securities into its new trading platform, SuperMontage, a process that began on October 14. As of today, all 3,950 securities listed on NASDAQ trade on SuperMontage.

"Our new trading platform, SuperMontage, illustrates how Nasdaq technology can offer trading opportunities more efficiently, quickly and transparently to investors," said Wick Simmons, chairman and CEO, NASDAQ. "It offers the most comprehensive picture of any market ever for all market participants."

Rick Ketchum, president and deputy chairman, NASDAQ, said, "SuperMontage has been very well-received by the securities industry. Our next generation securities platform is designed to provide investors, traders and our listed companies with the fairest, fastest, most liquid and dependable market possible."

"NASDAQ's SuperMontage has not only created the most transparent market, but also the most efficient market for both institutional investors and retail investors alike," said Nick Karos, managing director, NASDAQ trading, USB Piper Jaffrey.

Participants in SuperMontage today include the entire market making community — approximately 300 firms; ECNs including Archipelago, Bloomberg Tradebook, BRUT, The Track ECN, Attain, and NextTrade; and The Chicago Stock Exchange.

In its early stages, the new trading platform is demonstrating greater depth of liquidity and use of the reserve feature by market participants. The reserve feature allows market participants to post a portion of their liquidity in a manner that allows them to avoid tipping their hand. In one sample study by NASDAQ based on the November 11-13 time period, aggregate depth has increased more than 50 percent. Execution speed has improved to about 1/10th of a second. 93 percent of marketable orders - a limit order or market order that appears to be executable at the time it is entered - are fully or partially executed, up from 63 percent pre-SuperMontage.

SuperMontage is a fully integrated order display and execution system for the trading of NASDAQ-listed securities.

• It allows more buyers' and sellers' orders to be displayed so that investors can see more of the orders that are available to them.
• Market makers can input all or part of their buy or sell interest, by name or anonymously. This buy and sell interest will be available to view at five price levels - not just best price.
• It protects buy and sell orders of individual investors. That is, if your limit order is entered into SuperMontage, it will not be traded through or bypassed. This feature is especially important in a fast moving market.

SuperMontage was launched on October 14, 2002, with five securities. The remaining securities were transitioned over the following seven weeks, culminating in the final group of stocks being implemented on December 2.

Several new data packages derived from SuperMontage - TotalView, PowerView and DepthView - are bringing more information to investors by showing the landscape of interest in a particular stock and in the market as a whole. During the phase-in period, over 20,000 subscribers had access to these "ViewSuite" data packages that are available through most major vendors of market data.

NASDAQ (OTCBB:NDAQ) is the world's largest electronic stock market. With approximately 3,800 companies, NASDAQ lists more companies and trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market. Over the past five years, NASDAQ has outpaced all other U.S. markets in listing IPOs. It is home to category-defining companies that are leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail, communications, financial services, media and biotechnology industries. NASDAQ is a key driver of capital formation. For more information about NASDAQ, visit the NASDAQ Web site at www.NASDAQ.com or the NASDAQ Newsroom^SM at http://www.nasdaq.com/newsroom.