NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market (ⁱ/ˈnæzˌdæk/), commonly known as the NASDAQ (currently stylized as Nasdaq), is an American stock exchange. It is the second-largest exchange in the world by market capitalization, behind only the New York Stock Exchange. The exchange platform is owned by The NASDAQ OMX Group, which also owns the OMX stock market network and several other US stock and options exchanges.

History

In 1972, NASDAQ stood for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. NASDAQ was founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), which divested itself of NASDAQ in a series of sales in 2000 and 2001. NASDAQ is owned and operated by The NASDAQ OMX Group, the stocks of which were listed on its own stock exchange beginning July 2, 2002, under the ticker symbol NDAQ.

When the NASDAQ began trading on February 8, 1971, it was the world's first electronic stock market. At first, it was merely a quotation system and did not provide a way to perform electronic trades. The NASDAQ helped lower the spread (the difference between the bid price and the ask price of the stock) but was unpopular among brokerages which made much of their money on the spread.

Technical analysis

In finance, technical analysis is a security analysis methodology for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume.Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis use many of the same tools of technical analysis, which, being an aspect of active management, stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of both technical and fundamental analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis which states that stock market prices are essentially unpredictable.

History

The principles of technical analysis are derived from hundreds of years of financial market data. Some aspects of technical analysis began to appear in Joseph de la Vega's accounts of the Dutch markets in the 17th century. In Asia, technical analysis is said to be a method developed by Homma Munehisa during early 18th century which evolved into the use of candlestick techniques, and is today a technical analysis charting tool. In the 1920s and 1930s Richard W. Schabacker published several books which continued the work of Charles Dow and William Peter Hamilton in their books Stock Market Theory and Practice and Technical Market Analysis. In 1948 Robert D. Edwards and John Magee published Technical Analysis of Stock Trends which is widely considered to be one of the seminal works of the discipline. It is exclusively concerned with trend analysis and chart patterns and remains in use to the present. Early technical analysis was almost exclusively the analysis of charts, because the processing power of computers was not available for the modern degree of statistical analysis. Charles Dow reportedly originated a form of point and figure chart analysis.

NASDAQ-100

The NASDAQ-100 (^NDX) is a stock market index made up of 107 equity securities issued by 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ. It is a modified capitalization-weighted index. The stocks' weights in the index are based on their market capitalizations, with certain rules capping the influence of the largest components. It is based on exchange, and it is not an index of U.S.-based companies. It does not have any financial companies, since these were put in a separate index. Both of those criteria differentiate it from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the exclusion of financial companies distinguishes it from the S&P 500.

History

The NASDAQ-100 began on January 31, 1985 by the NASDAQ, trying to promote itself in the shadow of the New York Stock Exchange. It did so by creating two separate indices: this index, which consists of Industrial, Technology, Retail, Telecommunication, Biotechnology, Health Care, Transportation, Media and Service companies, and the NASDAQ Financial-100, which consists of banking companies, insurance firms, brokerage houses and mortgage companies. By creating these two indices, the NASDAQ hoped that options and futures contracts would be created on them, and mutual funds would adopt them as their benchmarks.

Dow Jones & Company

Dow Jones & Company is an American publishing and financial information firm that has been owned by News Corp. since 2007.

The company was best known for the publication of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related market statistics, Dow Jones Newswire and a number of financial publications. In 2010 the Dow Jones Indexes subsidiary was sold to the CME Group and the company focused on financial news publications, including its flagship publication The Wall Street Journal and providing financial news and information tools to financial companies.

The company was led by the Bancroft family, which held 64% of voting stock, from the 1920s until 2007 when an extended takeover battle saw News Corp take control of the company.

History

The company was founded in 1882 by three reporters: Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser.

Dow Jones was acquired in 1902 by the leading financial journalist of the day, Clarence Barron after the death of co-founder Charles Dow. Upon Barron's death in 1928, control of the company passed to his stepdaughters Jane and Martha Bancroft. The company was led by the Bancroft family, which effectively controlled 64% of all voting stock, until 2007 when an extended takeover battle saw News Corporation acquire the business.