With the help Insider Monkey’s latest article we can learn a lot about the largest stock exchanges in the world in 2017. While most of us associate stock exchanges with charts, graphs, indexes, and other data that is available online and can be used within seconds via a device that has a stable internet connection, the history of stock exchanges can be traced as far back as ancient Rome, where some historians suggest there were companies whose employees held shares that fluctuated in price over time based on the organization’s performance.
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Fast forward to today and there are hundreds of thousands of companies that are traded on the global stock markets, with many companies choosing to list their shares and sell them to the general public in order to raise capital. Big and small investors use stock exchanges to generate income for themselves to use for retirement or for their clients. Because of the high exposure of businesses to the stock market and the involvement of many people who in one way or another hold shares of different companies, the stock market is used as one of the determinants of the health of a country’s economy and investors’ sentiment towards that economy.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked three of the largest stock exchanges in the world in 2017 from their list.
The Toronto Stock Exchange is the first one on our list. During 2016, the Toronto Stock Exchange saw one of the largest capitalization growths among stock exchanges based in the Americas and was the growth leader among the 16 largest stock exchanges in the world in 2017. The total market capitalization of the Toronto Stock Exchange surged by 21.4% during the last year, although the number of listed companies declined to 3,419 from 3,559. The second one is Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The total market capitalization of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange inched up by 0.3% during 2016, but the number of listed companies advanced by 107 to 1,973. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange is owned and operated by the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing and it is one of the few exchanges that still have a physical trading floor, although it accounts for less than 1% of the trading volume. The third one is London Stock Exchange. We are continuing our list of largest stock exchanges in the world in 2017 with the London Stock Exchange is owned and operated by the London Stock Exchange Group plc, which also owns Italy’s only stock exchange, Borsa Italiana.
