Stock Exchange opens for business, A public market with a mission to support companies and investors

 A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse[note 1] is a facility where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds, and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for the issue and redemption of such securities and instruments and capital events including the payment of income and dividends.[citation needed] Securities traded on a stock exchange include stock issued by listed companies, unit trusts, derivatives, pooled investment products and bonds. Stock exchanges often function as "continuous auction" markets with buyers and sellers consummating transactions via open outcry at a central location such as the floor of the exchange or by using an electronic trading platform.[5]

The Long-Term Stock Exchange opens for businessA public market with a mission to support companies and investors who share a long-term visionEric RiesFollowSep 9 · 2 min readNine years ago, I proposed the idea of a Long-Term Stock Exchange in the epilogue of my book The Lean Startup. The objective was to create a public market designed for trading the stocks of companies organized to sustain long-term thinking.The concept arose from the many conversations I had while researching the book. I heard from fellow company founders and executives, long-term institutional investors, managers, workers and others, who all told me their stories about the problems we see in the public capital markets today.They described the immense pressure on companies to pursue short-term results over creating value for future decades and generations. They described innovation held hostage by boom-bust cycles, abrupt changes in governance, struggles to maintain constancy of purpose, and the difficulty for public companies in knowing who their long-term shareholders even are. One of the few things that pretty much everyone agreed on is that the focus on the short term undermines the building of sustainable businesses.In the years since, I’ve assembled an incredible team to make that idea a reality: a public market that supports capital formation while sustaining long-term thinking. Today, after months of booting up, I am thrilled to report that the Long-Term Stock Exchange has opened for business with a mission to support companies and investors who share a long-term vision.I owe a debt of gratitude to our team, to our investors, and to everyone who has worked to help us reach this milestone.Imagine if in the years since 2011 — a period, until the coronavirus pandemic, of business prosperity — America’s public companies had listed on an exchange that ranked building a sustainable business a top priority. Trillions of dollars would have been redirected toward training employees, breakthrough research, strengthening corporate balance sheets and making needed investments.Employees, customers, communities and the environment would be dramatically better off. The majority of shareholders would be better off as well, because those companies would be both better equipped to deal with the disruption of the pandemic and to emerge on the other side prepared to create value for years to come.As we adapt to a different world, a public market that offers companies the resilience of long-term governance and supports the creation of value over time can help to put our society on the path toward a sounder future. The Long-Term Stock Exchange represents, I hope, one brick in a new foundation for our civic society.



There is usually no obligation for stock to be issued through the stock exchange itself, nor must stock be subsequently traded on an exchange. Such trading may be off exchange or over-the-counter. This is the usual way that derivatives and bonds are traded. Increasingly, stock exchanges are part of a global securities market. Stock exchanges also serve an economic function in providing liquidity to shareholders in providing an efficient means of disposing of shares.



Capital intensive companies, particularly high tech companies, always need to raise high volumes of capital in their early stages. For this reason, the public market provided by the stock exchanges has been one of the most important funding sources for many capital intensive startups. In the 1990s and early 2000s, hi-tech listed companies experienced a boom and bust in the world's major stock exchanges. Since then, it has been much more demanding for the high-tech entrepreneur to take his/her company public, unless either the company is already generating sales and earnings, or the company has demonstrated credibility and potential from successful outcomes: clinical trials, market research, patent registrations, etc. This is quite different from the situation of the 1990s to early-2000s period, when a number of companies (particularly Internet boom and biotechnology companies) went public in the most prominent stock exchanges around the world in the total absence of sales, earnings, or any type of well-documented promising outcome. Though it's not as common, it still happens that highly speculative and financially unpredictable hi-tech startups are listed for the first time in a major stock exchange. Additionally, there are smaller, specialized entry markets for these kind of companies with stock indexes tracking their performance (examples include the Alternext, CAC Small, SDAX, TecDAX).

A stock exchange does not own shares. Instead, it acts as a market where stock buyers connect with stock sellers. Stocks can be traded on one or more of several exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the Nasdaq.  Although you will most likely trade stocks through a broker, it is important to understand the relationship between exchanges and companies, and the ways in which the requirements of different exchanges protect investors.

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Initial public offerings of stocks and bonds to investors is done in the primary market and subsequent trading is done in the secondary market. A stock exchange is often the most important component of a stock market. Supply and demand in stock markets are driven by various factors that, as in all free markets, affect the price of stocks (see stock valuation).

Courtyard of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (or Beurs van Hendrick de Keyser in Dutch), the world's first formal stock exchange. The first formal stock market in its modern sense, was a pioneering innovation by the VOC managers and shareholders in the early 1600s.[1][2]

Ant Group challenged China’s state-dominated banking system by bringing easy-to-use payments, borrowing and investing to hundreds of millions of smartphones across the country. On Tuesday, Chinese officialdom reminded the company who was really in charge.In a late-evening announcement that stunned China, the Shanghai Stock Exchange slammed the brakes on Ant’s initial public offering, which was set to be the biggest stock debut in history with investors on multiple continents and at least $34 billion in proceeds.The stock exchange’s notice to Ant said that the company’s proposed offering might no longer meet the requirements for listing after Chinese regulators had summoned company executives, including Jack Ma, the co-founder of the e-commerce titan Alibaba and Ant’s controlling shareholder, for a meeting on Monday.Neither the regulators nor Ant has said in detail what was discussed at the meeting. But the timing of the conversation, mere days before Ant’s shares were expected to begin trading concurrently in Shanghai and Hong Kong, suggested discord with the company or with Mr. Ma, who spun Ant out of Alibaba in 2011.

London Stock Exchange is one of the world’s oldest stock exchanges and can trace its history back to the coffee houses of 17th century London. For many decades, London Stock Exchange provided a trading floor where members could buy and sell shares. Today, share trad

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is the world's largest equities exchange. Although some of its functions have been transferred to electronic trading platforms, it remains one of the world's leading auction markets, meaning specialists (called "Designated Market Makers") are physically present on its trading floors. Each specialist specializes in a particular stock, buying and selling the stock in the auction.

To be able to trade a security on a certain stock exchange, the security must be listed there. Usually, there is a central location at least for record keeping, but trade is increasingly less linked to a physical place, as modern markets use electronic communication networks, which give them advantages of increased speed and reduced cost of transactions. Trade on an exchange is restricted to brokers who are members of the exchange. In recent years, various other trading venues, such as electronic communication networks, alternative trading systems and "dark pools" have taken much of the trading activity away from traditional stock exchanges.[6]

London's first stockbrokers, however, were barred from the old commercial center known as the Royal Exchange, reportedly because of their rude manners. Instead, the new trade was conducted from coffee houses along Exchange Alley. By 1698, a broker named John Castaing, operating out of Jonathan's Coffee House, was posting regular lists of stock and commodity prices. Those lists mark the beginning of the London Stock Exchange.[16]

Though he is not part of Ant’s management, Mr. Ma has been a spirited champion for the company’s mission of bringing financial services to small businesses and others in China who he says have been ill served by stodgy, government-run institutions.Shortly after the Shanghai exchange’s announcement, Ant said it was suspending the Hong Kong leg of its listing as well. The company apologized to investors “for any inconvenience.”“We will keep in close communications with the Shanghai Stock Exchange and relevant regulators,” the company said, “and wait for their further notice with respect to further developments of our offering and listing process.”Shares of Alibaba, a major Ant shareholder, fell 8 percent on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

At the stock exchange, share prices rise and fall depending, largely, on economic forces. Share prices tend to rise or remain stable when companies and the economy in general show signs of stability and growth. A recession, depression, or financial crisis could eventually lead to a stock market crash. Therefore, the movement of share prices and in general of the stock indexes can be an indicator of the general trend in the economy.

There is little consensus among scholars as to when corporate stock was first traded. Some see the key event as the Dutch East India Company's founding in 1602,[7] while others point to earlier developments (Bruges, Antwerp in 1531 and in Lyon in 1548). The first book in history of securities exchange, the Confusion of Confusions, was written by the Dutch-Jewish trader Joseph de la Vega and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange is often considered the oldest “modern” securities market in the world.[8]. On the other hand, economist Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California at Berkeley argues that a share market existed as far back as ancient Rome, that derives from Etruscan "Argentari". In the Roman Republic, which existed for centuries before the Empire was founded, there were societates publicanorum, organizations of contractors or leaseholders who performed temple-building and other services for the government. One such service was the feeding of geese on the Capitoline Hill as a reward to the birds after their honking warned of a Gallic invasion in 390 B.C. Participants in such organizations had partes or shares, a concept mentioned various times by the statesman and orator Cicero. In one speech, Cicero mentions "shares that had a very high price at the time". Such evidence, in Malmendier's view, suggests the instruments were tradable, with fluctuating values based on an organization's success. The societas declined into obscurity in the time of the emperors, as most of their services were taken over by direct agents of the state.