Nasdaq Official Closing Price (NOCP)

Launch in April, 2003, the NOCP is the Nasdaq Official Closing Price. It is the process for identifying the Nasdaq market-specific closing price for Nasdaq-listed issues.

The NOCP value is disseminated at 4:01:30 p.m. Eastern Time (ET). It's recalculated and re-disseminated if the trade underlying the NOCP is cancelled or corrected at any time prior to 5:15 p.m. ET.

Prior to the launch of the NOCP, NASDAQ did not designate an “official” NASDAQ closing price. The last NASDAQ trade report that was eligible to set the last sale value – and had been entered into ACT at or before 4:01:30 p.m. – was employed by many market participants as a de-facto primary market closing price for NASDAQ securities. Because market participants had 90 seconds to report a transaction, slowly reported trades often set the closing price, even though they may have been away from the inside market. NASDAQ’s proposal to establish the NOCP was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 18.

The NOCP is not to be confused with the consolidated last sale price, which is comprised of the final last sale eligible trade report submitted to the Securities Information Processor (SIP) during the regular trading session by any market center, including NASDAQ. The NOCP calculation does not affect the consolidated last sale price or its calculation in any way.