Outage Puts NASDAQ in Dark for 3 Hours

A power outage disrupted trading of over-the-counter stocks for about three hours on Wednesday, leaving brokerage firms across the country in the dark on vital trading information and with a backlog of orders to process.

However, many dealers said business had been slow and thus trading was not significantly affected by the shutdown of the National Assn. of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations system.

The National Assn. of Securities Dealers said the power failure knocked out the main computer that runs the NASDAQ system from Trumbull, Conn., at around 10:43 a.m. EST.

The system started to come back on line by 12:05 p.m. through a backup computer facility in Rockville, Md., the association said. It said most service, including current price information and volume, was restored by 2:30 p.m.

The problem affected the data that the association reported to news media for inclusion in newspaper stock tables. The group said there might be inaccuracies in some of the high and low prices and volume figures.