Google Shares Plummet In Stock Fiasco

The Nasdaq is looking into an incident that sent Google Inc.'s stock plummeting by $350 a share last week, a newspaper reported Monday.

The incident occurred Thursday after the stock market closed at 4 p.m. EST, The New York Sun reported. An unidentified person from a Nasdaq member firm apparently typed in an erroneous figure to commence a trade, causing Google shares to trade for as low as $38 between 4:10 p.m. and 4:12 p.m.

Google stock had finished the day of regular trading at $387.12 a share.

Google was not available for immediate comment. The incident occurred minutes after Google had reported second-quarter results that beat Wall Street earnings estimates.

One broker told the newspaper that a client who had bought $76,000 worth of Google stock earlier last week at $380 a share became hysterical when he learned of the stock plunge.

"The way he sounded, I thought for sure the man was going to have a heart attack," the broker said.

At 5:01 p.m., Nasdaq announced that it would cancel all after-hours trades in Google at or below $352.07 a share, the Sun said.