The Nasdaq Stock Market says that its web site, nasdaq.com, was accessed by more than 2.5 million people worldwide seeking market information on Monday and Tuesday during heavy market activity. The site, which regularly averages about 7 million hits a day, received over 14 million hits on Monday, and more than 20 million hits on Tuesday, as Nasdaq’s share volume climbed to a record 1.37 billion shares traded. In anticipation of the heavy traffic, Nasdaq increased capacity Monday night by 60 percent with the addition of several high-end Dell servers. During peak market hours nasdaq.com was providing 450 connections per second, up from the usual 90 to 100 connections per second. Visits to the site by investors outside of the U.S. have also increased, ranging from 10 percent to 15 percent of the total usage. Nasdaq says its site is the only stock market site that disseminates data for its listed companies directly from the computers that run its market.
