Trading Places
Trading Places
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.
