NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) stock exchange is one of the biggest stock exchanges in the United States and in the World.

It was established by National Association Of Securities Dealers (NASD) in 1971. In year 2008 there were represented stock and shares of 2952 US and non-US corporations from all sectors and it is the most exchange with the most actively traded stocks. In year 2008 the total value of stocks traded was $36556.5 trillion, more than in NYSE (now it is $12.6 trillion and NYSE stock are valued for almost $18 trillion) .

NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) stock exchange

NASDAQ was the first electronic trading exchange which was established in 1971. The maximum value of NASDAQ index was on 10th March 2010 and reached 5132.52. Peak was connected with internet company bubble known as „dot-com bubble”.

NASDAQ as other US exchanges cooperate with US regulators – CFTC (commodity Futures Trading Commission) and SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission).

Basing on the statistical data provided by World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) NASDAQ OMX was the second exchange by domestic market capitalization in year 2010.

Lets look at the statistical information about market capitalization of other exchanges.

Domestic market capitalization (WFE statistics) per exchange in 2010, in $ millions

As you can see, NASDAQ OMX market capitalization in year  2010 was $3.9 trillion.

NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.

Today NASDAQ is not the only stock exchange in United States. This is a huge holding NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. which included a number of exchanges all around the World. Under the name NASDAQ OMX Baltic and NASDAQ OMX Nordic you can find a number of exchanges in Baltics and Northern Europe: Nasdaq OMX Riga, Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, Nasdaq OMX Helsinki, Nasdaq OMX Tallinn and etc. Since year 2009 Norwegian exchange is also a part of NASDAQ OMX Nordic. As well as, NASDAQ owns NASDAQ Dubai exchange.

Of course NASDAQ OMX Group is the owner of clearing organizations, electronic trading systems and other companies which are involved in trading on exchanges.

The overall market capitalization of companies which belong to NASDAQ Group is more than $5 trillion. It is represented in 50 countries.

NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. allows to trade not only stocks, bonds and ETFs but also derivatives, commodities and structured products.

Nowadays NASDAQ is:

• The largest exchange in IT industry, IT capitalization is more than $1.8 trillion.
• The largest exchange in Biotechnologies which capitalization is around $250 billion.
• The largest exchange in paper (why not) production sector which capitalization is more than $30 billion.

The level of transparency and quality of trading can be explained by several facts:

• INET trading platform is used all around USA and EU.
• INET platform is able to process more than 1 million messages per second.
• 1 of 10 trades happen at NASDAQ OMX Group exchanges.
• Other achievements.