page_title: Securities market participants (United States)
section_title: Stock exchanges
hierarchical_section_title: Securities market participants (United States) / Parties to transactions / Stock exchanges
caption_attribution_description: English: The New York Stock Exchange, photographed on May 2, 2011. Photographed by Luigi Novi. This photo is not in the public domain. It may, however, be used, modified and published for any purpose, free of charge, only if the photographer is properly credited, either by linking the photograph to this page, or with an easily visible credit to the photographer placed near the photo in each instance in which it is used. Please maintain the original file name in all uses. (See licensing information below.) Publication of this photo without this proper attribution constitutes copyright infringement. You can see a gallery of some of my other photos here. If you have any questions, you can contact me on my Wikipedia Talk Page.
context_page_description: Securities market participants in the United States include corporations and governments issuing securities, persons and corporations buying and selling a security, the broker-dealers and exchanges which facilitate such trading, banks which safe keep assets, and regulators who monitor the markets' activities. Investors buy and sell through broker-dealers and have their assets retained by either their executing broker-dealer, a custodian bank or a prime broker. These transactions take place in the environment of equity and equity options exchanges, regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or derivative exchanges, regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. For transactions involving stocks and bonds, transfer agents assure that the ownership in each transaction is properly assigned to and held on behalf of each investor.
  Supporting these transactions, there are three central securities depositories and four clearing organizations that assure the settlement of large volumes of trades.
context_section_description: A stock exchange is a physical or digital place to which brokers and dealers send buy and sell orders in stocks (also called shares), bonds, and other securities. Price discovery is optimized by bringing together at one point in time and place all buy and sell orders for a particular security.
  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 at a central location, such as the floor of the exchange.
  To qualify for trading on an exchange, a security must first be listed, having met the requirements of the listing exchange.  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.
  Exchanges for equities, options, futures and derivatives include:
  Equities - multiple exchanges (NYSE, Nasdaq, BATS Global Markets and others) compete for order flow from brokers with different products and pricing
  Options on equities - similar to equities but including the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the International Securities Exchange
  Futures and derivatives - the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including its acquisitions of similar exchanges, is the sole venue for many derivative contracts, which must be cleared at the same exchanges
  Energy related derivatives - the Intercontinental Exchange (which now owns the NYSE among a number of acquisitions) dominates energy related derivative trading, again with its own clearing arrangements.
  US government debt does not trade on exchanges. Rather there are a number of primary dealers which buy directly from the government and resell to other broker-dealers and institutional investors.
caption: New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a host of transactions in securities.
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