(March 12 – 09:40 ET) – Nasdaq has begun trading in decimal increments today, with a pilot program of 15 securities.

Nasdaq will implement two decimal pilot programs prior to converting all equity securities to decimal pricing. Today’s pilot will be followed on March 26 with a second pilot of 177 companies; and on April 9, all Nasdaq equity securities will be fully converted to decimals.

The stocks selected for the first pilot were chosen to represent a range of stock trading activities to give Nasdaq experience with the response of stocks with different characteristics (active volume, low price, high price, etc.).

They include: Canada’s Research in Motion, Brocade Communications Systems, Commerce One, Copper Mountain Networks, Cree Inc., Extreme Networks, Inktomi, Integrated Device Technology, Micromuse, Newport Corporation, OpenWave Systems, Rambus, Redback Networks, and VerticalNet Inc. One OTC stock is also taking the plunge: Coastal Caribbean Oil & Minerals Ltd.

The conversion to decimals is governed by the Decimals Implementation Plan For the Equities and Options Markets, which was submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on July 24, 2000. The SEC is requiring U.S. markets to move to decimals to improve spreads and lower investors’ costs. The New York Stock Exchange has already implemented decimal trading in all securities as of January.