At the end of the settlement date of March 15, 2012, short interest in 2,252 NASDAQ Global Market^SM securities totaled 6,578,692,977 shares compared with 6,434,814,070 shares in 2,258 Global Market issues reported for the prior settlement date of February 29, 2012. The mid-March short interest represents 3.85 days average daily NASDAQ Global Market share volume for the reporting period, compared with 3.55 days for the prior reporting period.

Short interest in 485 securities on The NASDAQ Capital Market^SM totaled 383,665,959 shares at the end of the settlement date of March 15, 2012 compared with 355,300,881 shares in 482 securities for the previous reporting period. This represents 4.52 days average daily volume, compared with the previous reporting period's figure of 4.35.

In summary, short interest in all 2,737 NASDAQ® securities totaled 6,962,358,936 shares at the March 15, 2012 settlement date, compared with 2,740 issues and 6,790,114,951 shares at the end of the previous reporting period. This is 3.88 days average daily volume, compared with an average of 3.59 days for the previous reporting period.

The open short interest positions reported for each NASDAQ security reflect the total number of shares sold short by all broker/dealers regardless of their exchange affiliations. A short sale is generally understood to mean the sale of a security that the seller does not own or any sale that is consummated by the delivery of a security borrowed by or for the account of the seller.

For more information on NASDAQ Short interest positions, including publication dates, visit http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/short-interest.aspx or http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/asp/short_interest.asp.