Google's scare on Wall Street

It was already a wild day on Wall Street. Then it got even wilder today on the Nasdaq for Google investors.

At first, all was right with the tech world. Stocks were swimming in a sea of green, recovering from a bloody red Monday. Google was trading up slightly most of the day, staying in a fairly narrow but very respectable range.

Then suddenly in the final few minutes, the stock began to soar and plummet like an out-of-control yo-yo. Google Finance lists the day's high as $488.43 and the low as $25.80.

Felix Salmon's reaction: Say what? We knew we were in the middle of a financial meltdown, but come on.

Nasdaq's surveillance arm got on the case at, ahem, Internet speed. It turns out "erroneous orders" that were routed to Nasdaq from another market center had triggered the plunge, a Nasdaq spokesman said in an e-mail. He did not say which exchange was responsible.

Nasdaq canceled all trades at or above $425.29 and trades at or below $400.52 that were executed between 3:57 and 4:02 EDT. Nasdaq set the closing price at $400.52, which was a 5% gain after Monday's 12% loss. The decision cannot be appealed, he said.

A Google spokesman declined to comment.

Wiping out trades is not a happy business at Nasdaq. It's both rare and embarrassing. But at least fund managers' hearts are no longer in their throats. Google's closing price is far below the company's all-time high. But today investors will take it and like it.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: A passerby in Times Square checks out the Nasdaq Marketsite studio. Credit: Julie Jacobson / Associated Press

Comments

[Matt]

Google is undervalued. It has been going down based on the speculation that companies will invest less in advertising. It is a well known fact for large corporations to thrive in bad economic times they invest more in advertising to sustain their brand imaging. Google will continue to grow revenue as a large percentage of it's revenue is from small and mid size companies. Internet usage will go up as people lose jobs..where else do they go to research jobs?? The internet and Google owns the internet.

[Rev. Dave]

Google is at best a $5 stock. Just wait and see. More "erroneous orders" tomorrow.

[Svetlana Gladkova]

The worst part is that after all the talks that Google is overvalued today it is hard to tell what we should expect once the market opens again tomorrow. Sure, NASDAQ voided all the trades at those crazy prices but they won't be able to prevent irrational market reactions after we've been discussing the crazy GOOG behavior the entire evening.

[Radical Raul]

Google is extremely over valued.

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