Nasdaq Market Shares Trade on Bulletin Board

Shares in the Nasdaq Stock Market didn’t get much of a reception Monday on their first day of unofficial trading in public markets.

Nasdaq opened and closed at $15 on the over-the-counter Bulletin Board. Volume reached 1,300 shares, a sliver of the 34 million shares eligible for trading.

Monday marked the first day that investors who acquired shares of Nasdaq in two private placements, in 2000 and 2001, were allowed to sell a portion of those shares.

Nasdaq, which has been considering an initial public offering, has postponed those plans because of market conditions. In the meantime it has discouraged its private-placement investors from selling.

But some opted to do so anyway Monday.

“Nasdaq does not intend to participate in, or encourage, these Bulletin Board activities,” Chairman Hardwick Simmons said in a letter to shareholders in June. “It is not clear that a market will develop for our common stock.”

The shares are trading under the symbol NDAQ.