Trading Places

I l @ ve RuBoard

So, where are all these trades taking place? Way before there was money, people used to trade items to each other. If I had a goat and you wanted it, you'd offer me three chickens in trade, and we'd both go off happy. If someone else offered me four chickens, or if someone else showed up with a bigger goat, there would probably be a lot of yelling involved. Eventually, people finally figured out that they'd save time looking for other people with whom to trade if they regularly showed up at one designated location where everyone brought something to trade.

With the introduction of money, these trades evolved into purchases and sales. Thousands of years later, the market concept is still very much alive . People who want to buy or sell stocks figure that showing up at the same location at the same time to trade stocks is a pretty good idea. Today, over 140 physical exchanges buy and sell trillions of shares of hundreds of thousands of stocks 24 hours per day. Although those figures are mind-boggling, they represent only a small fraction of the trades being conducted over computerized networks.

Here are the markets:

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

The largest physical stock exchange in the world.
American Stock Exchange (AMEX).

The rival of the NYSE in size and prestige.
Regional exchanges.

Fourteen exchanges located around the United States.
Over the counter.

A term for stocks traded over a computerized network called the National Market System (NMS).
International exchanges.

Stock exchanges in other countries .
Other markets.

Markets where the trading of financial instruments other than stocks, such as futures , options, and money, is conducted.

I l @ ve RuBoard