Nasdaq suspended trading of all stocks for about three hours Thursday because of technical problems.

Full trading on Nasdaq stock market resumed at 3:25 p.m. (1925 GMT) after the exchange said on its website that all traffic through Nasdaq stopped at 12:14 p.m. (1614 GMT).

Nasdaq began limited trading at 3 p.m. (1900 GMT) and Atlantic American Corp was the first Nasdaq-listed company that resumed trading after the outage.

Trading was also halted on all Nasdaq options markets. Nasdaq also announced that options on its exchanges would resume trading a little later.

Nasdaq said in an alert at nearly 1 p.m. (1700 GMT) that it intends to re-open trading in all Tape C securities with a halt cross with a five-minute quote only period starting at a time to be determined.

The exchange also said that it will not be canceling open orders on the book. "Customers who wish to cancel their orders may do so and any customer who wishes to not participate in the re- opening should cancel their orders prior to the resumption of trading."

Shares of the Nasdaq OMX Group, the operator of Nasdaq closed down as the halted trading resumed.

No detailed reasons have been given about the trading outage.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission responded to the trading glitch, saying that it is monitoring the Nasdaq situation and in close contact with exchanges.

The New York Stock Exchange had said that it halted trading in all Nasdaq securities at the request of Nasdaq. While another exchange CME Group said it saw no impact from Nasdaq trading halt.