-->Nasdaq's Closing

As the market closed, some Nasdaq stocks had ``some really crazy moves,'' said Dan Mathisson, head of electronic trading at Credit Suisse First Boston.

For example, shares of Altera Corp., the world's second- largest maker of programmable semiconductors, traded little changed near $21 all day. At 4:01 p.m. and 21 seconds, it traded at $21.48. At 4:01 and 31 seconds, 847,000 shares traded at a closing price of $25.50.

Mathisson said the cause was the Nasdaq's ``closing cross,'' a system introduced this year. Like the New York Stock Exchange's market-on-close orders, Nasdaq's closing cross allows investors to place orders up to 3:50 p.m. on the Nasdaq to receive a single closing price. After that, it publishes continuous information about imbalances between buy and sell orders.

Traders apparently ignored notices of a buy imbalance on Altera, accounting for the swing.

``I would consider it a mess,'' Mathisson said. ``You have massive price dislocations on the close that were very unfair to a lot of people. There was someone on the wrong side of all these trades.''

Nasdaq spokeswoman Bethany Sherman said the closing cross was a success, with 333.5 million shares traded. ``True prices were discovered by the electronic transparent auction process,'' she said.