Chapter 4. Stock Exchanges of the World

At the moment there are about 200 stock exchanges around the world. The leading role in the world stock exchange turnover belongs to them. The largest stock exchanges are also a regulator and indicator of the state of the world economy. The emergence of types of stock exchanges is conditioned by the presence of a formed and developed trade and consumer or industrial structure. Therefore, it is in the countries that had a great development in the Middle Ages and preserved their potential, and the most famous and largest stock exchanges are located. Returning to the subject of consideration, let us consider the most famous in our time types of stock exchanges.

There are 13 stock exchanges in the USA, among them there is the largest in the world – New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Its turnover accounts for about half of the total turnover of foreign stock exchanges. The New York Stock Exchange is located in Manhattan, at 11 Wall Street. For several decades in a row it has been a symbol of the financial power of the United States and the entire financial industry. It is based on the performance of the shares of industrial companies traded on it that the well-known Dow Jones Industrial Average and the equally famous NYSE Composite index are determined.

The American Stock Exchange (AMEX), established in 1911, plays an important role in the U.S. stock market. Since the nineties of the last century, the world’s first electronic trades using wireless terminals have been held there.

Also worth mentioning is NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation) – an over-the-counter market that specializes in shares of high-tech companies (software, electronics, etc.).

22 stock exchanges operate in major cities of Great Britain, such as London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow. Among them we can single out the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which is the most international among all UK stock exchanges. LSE is one of the world’s leading financial centers.

Japan now has 9 stock exchanges, among which the largest is the Tokyo Stock Exchange. This is an old exchange (founded in 1878) with its own rules and traditions. Its main specialization is trading in shares of corporations and financial institutions.

All these countries have their own national exchange systems based on historical peculiarities that determine both the specific place of the exchange in the exchange system and the functioning of this system as a whole. Well, what happens to the types of stock exchanges in our country? At the moment there are more than 10 stock exchanges in Russia, but the main trading is conducted only on two of them:

The Russian Trading System (RTS) was founded in 1995 and is currently one of the largest stock exchanges in Russia. It is the RTS that is universally recognized as the pricing center for bonds and shares of the widest range of issuers. This platform services a significant share of foreign portfolio investments in the Russian economy, making information about trading in the RTS a source of information about the state of the Russian securities market. But now the main trading volumes are gradually moving to another leading Russian exchange – MICEX.

The Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) is the oldest (founded in 1992) and currently the main stock exchange in Russia. It is a universal trading floor where operations on the stock and currency markets are conducted. It is the largest stock exchange in Russia, CIS countries and Eastern Europe, on its basis there is a national trading system in all major segments of the Russian financial market, namely: foreign exchange, stock and derivatives markets. MICEX also provides depository and settlement and clearing services to more than one and a half thousand organizations that are participants of the exchange market.

We have considered the basic concepts related to stock exchanges. In the following chapters you will learn who exactly can perform transactions on the stock exchange. In addition, we will touch upon an important question for us: how a private person (Internet trader) can conduct transactions on the stock exchange and who can help him in this.
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