Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)

Australian Securities Exchange - Australia's main stock exchange. ASX is a public company whose shares are traded on the exchange itself. The main trading floor is located in the building "The Exchange Center in the city of Sydney, New South Wales.

History

Beginning in the 1850s, a mass immigration of the free population to Australia began, largely related to the discovery of gold and other minerals. The subsequent rapid development of the mining and manufacturing industries created the need for a trading floor on which the securities of local companies could be traded. Many immigrants came from Britain, a country with a hundred-year-old tradition of stock trading, and one of the oldest stock exchanges in the world - the London Stock Exchange - was functioning for more than 50 years, which helped in no small measure in the development of the Australian Stock Exchange.

Over the next 30 years, virtually every major city in Australia developed its trading platformsThe first stock exchanges in Australia were: Melbourne in 1861, Sydney in 1871, Hobart in 1882, Brisbane in 1884, Adelaide in 1887 and Perth in 1889. Thus, the first stock exchanges in Australia appeared before the separated states were united into a single state (1901).

The management of the exchanges was independent of each otherHowever, there were regular informal meetings at which brokers discussed the direction of exchange trading in Australia. First ConferenceThe meeting was held in 1903 in Melbourne and united brokers of all stock exchanges. Further meetings were held annually until 1937, when it was decided to unite the stock exchanges into a single organization. Thus, there appeared Association of Australian Securities Exchanges (English. Australian Associated Stock Exchanges, AASE)The association was established by the European Commission, whose leadership consisted of representatives of all six trading floors on the continent. During the first period of its existence, the association established general rules for trading at the exchange, rules for brokers' activities, the amount of commissions that brokers were entitled to charge for their work.

The twentieth century - the first "bubble"

Dutch PoseidonIn Australia, the company announced that it had found vast deposits of the metal, which immediately increased the value of its shares several times. The particularly enterprising competitor companies, watching the success of Poseidon, also decided to capitalize on the rise in the stock price. One after another firms (some of which did not even have the right to work with the deposits) began to announce the nickel deposits they had found, and investors easily purchased their stocks, realizing that they would still grow and grow in the conditions of increasing demand for the metal. But when the prices of the stocks reached such a ceiling that investors simply could not buy them and it became clear that many issuers had cheated their shareholders, the value of the securities collapsed overnight. At the same time investors who suffered losses for some time could not buy and sell shares of other companies - they simply did not have the money to do so.

Australia's geographic location saved it from stock market crises, which occurred in different regions of the world. In any case, only echoes of serious global financial shocks reached here, which did not significantly change the situation on the Australian stock exchange. Therefore, since the 1970s the exchange has been demonstrating progressive upward movement, albeit without significant jerks and without noticeable downturns. The Australian trading floor attracts more and more private investors - the market (even if small compared to the world exchange giants) is growing, and different commissions (operational, brokerage) are constantly decreasing. In 1987 there was introduced electronic trading systemThis also had an impact on the increase in the number of private investors - the necessary information became more accessible. In addition to basic financial instruments, investors began to be offered futures and options, in general, the Australian exchange system began to meet the world standards of exchange trading.

S&P/ASX 200 Index

The main indicator of the Australian Stock Exchange is considered to be S&P/ASX 200 Indexwhich is calculated on the basis of the value of the shares of its largest companies. Among the issuers on the list of the 200 most expensive, the largest are the financial corporations The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, the mining companies BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, the telecommunications company Telstra Corporation.

In total at the exchange, which opens the second top ten largest sites in the world in terms of capitalization, traded stocks of 2009 companiesThe market capitalization of the stock exchange is 34% of which 1,926 are "registered" in Australia, and the remaining 83 represent foreign countries. 34% of the market capitalization of the exchange is provided by companies representing the financial sector of the economy. Other major players Australian Stock Exchange - industrial companies (about 20% of the total exchange capitalization) and real estate firms (10%). The aggregate value of securities of all issuers traded at the exchange exceeds 1.2 trillion dollars..

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