What you need to know:

On July 14, 2025, The Nasdaq Stock Market will introduce price protections for the halt cross process. This enhancement will align the halt cross process with other auctions run by the exchange (opening/closing cross, LULD cross, etc.) by adding price collars within which the auction must occur. The new price collars will be disseminated on Nasdaq TotalView ITCH.

What is changing?

At the start of the auction quoting period, upper and lower collars will be calculated by taking 10% of the symbol reference price. If at the end of the quoting period the reference price is within the established collars, the cross will execute all orders available to match and any unexecuted orders will be cancelled back to customers.

If at the end of the quoting period the auction price is outside of the collars, a second quoting period will commence for an additional 5 minutes and new upper and lower collars will be calculated by subtracting (adding) an additional 10% of the initial reference price from the previous lower (upper) collars.

If the auction price remains below the lower collar or above the upper collar after the second quoting period, the collars will be widened again by subtracting (adding) an additional 20% of the initial auction reference price from the previous lower (upper) collars. This 20% collar-widening process will start with the 3^rd quoting period and continue every 5 minutes until which point the security’s auction price is within the upper and lower collars so that the halt cross can occur and the security can resume trading.

Auction collars will be published to TotalView ITCH using the existing “Auction Collar” message.

Additional information about the halt cross protections can be found in SEC rule filing SR-NASDAQ-2024-065. Please contact Nasdaq Trading Services with any questions.

Why is Nasdaq making this change?

Nasdaq is making this change to align its halt cross process with its other auction processes and introduce similar price protections to ensure that stocks re-open at an appropriate price level.

What market data products are impacted?

There are two market data products impacted by this change:

• Nasdaq TotalView
• Nasdaq TotalView Aggregate

Will these changes impact the message structure of the impacted products?

No, the structure of the “Limit Up – Limit Down (LULD) Auction Collar” message is not changing; however, the interpretation of the message is changing.

Testing Opportunities

Testing is currently available in the Nasdaq Testing Facility (NTF).

Saturday UAT production testing will be available on June 7^th and July 12^th.