Financial Markets

The financial markets exist within the states and there primary markets; New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and American Stock Exchange. Everyone is aware that the New York Stock exchange is the biggest market in the states, so we will focus on the other two for this report.

First these are organizations that are built to trade stocks and bonds; they trade both private stocks and groups of stock known as funds. They sell in both the physical way or at a place of business and over the electronic market.

American Stock Exchange (AMEX) is an exchange that is tied to a physical location; New York City. AMEX is one of the oldest exchanges and has roots back to the colonial days. They started out trading stocks on the streets of New York and eventually moved it indoors. They are considered liberal and run much smaller companies through the exchange. They use brokers to exchange stocks between buyers.

NASDAQ is an American electronic stock exchange. It originally stood for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. It was founded in 1971 and did not connect buyers and sellers in the beginning.

NASDAQ currently trades approximately 3,200 companies on its list. It boosts trading more shares per day than any other U.S. market and being the largest electronic stock exchange. It is a virtual exchange and has no face to face trading but it is done electronically. They use a market maker; "A market maker is a person or a firm which quotes a buy and sell price in a financial instrument or commodity hoping to make a profit on the turn or the bid/offer spread" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_maker). The market maker is required to maintain two-sided markets during exchange hours and they have to buy and sell at their displayed buy and sell prices.

The two markets are similar in the fact that they both are trading stocks, have listing companies and require companies to go by a set of regulations.

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