20 Largest Stock Exchanges in the World

With technology advancing and barriers to entry falling just as rapidly, the exchange game is a dynamic industry these days. Emerging markets are on the rise, but in terms of overall market capitalization, the historical powers are still the largest. There are many more stock exchanges that make a huge impact on the world's stock market. The following article in Insidermonkey contains more details and information on the 20 largest stock exchanges in the world.

For business owners, the benefit of the stock market is that it allows for an influx of capital, while also allowing key figures within the company to maintain large stakes in the business. Other ways of expanding an operation, like taking a loan, or bringing in an affluent individual to bankroll the operation, pose unique challenges to a growing company. The first option has the potential to create insurmountable debt. If the company doesn’t do well after it begins to expand, the borrower is on the hook for repaying the investor all the money they borrowed, plus interest.

The function of stock exchanges, then, is to offer markets where people can sell shares of their companies to interested buyers. While there are many of these exchanges around the world, there are some that have much bigger businesses – and a lot more money – flowing through them. Here are the 10 biggest stock exchanges in the world, ordered on the basis of their annual turnover, market capitalization, and the number of companies involved.

Naturally, countries with powerful economies and a highly developed private sector are bound to have a bigger financial market, thus making it possible to guess the top ranking institutions. To know more about it, check out this article in Insidermonkey on the 20 biggest IPOs in US history as well.