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5 Basic Stock Market Facts Explained By Traders Union Analysts

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Stocks remain very popular among traders: these securities are quite profitable, and even a beginner can learn how to use them in no time. While you probably won’t be able to become a professional just by reading educational articles online, it is important that you learn at least the most basic facts about the market before entering it. In this Traders Union article, we give you some key facts about the stock market and explain them.

Overall market cap

Market cap represents the total value of all assets traded on a certain market. That means the market cap for the stock market basically shows the overall value of all existing stocks. That number is pretty impressive: the capitalization of the global stock market exceeds $95 trillion. The US market takes up about half of that number: its capitalization is estimated at about $45 trillion.

Most valuable stocks

While most stocks are pretty cheap, there are extremely valuable stocks as well. For example, NEXT, a UK-based clothing retailer, costs about $7,000 per share. However, that’s still quite cheap compared to the most expensive stock in the world: Berkshire Hathaway. This international holding company led by Warren Buffett is known to have extremely valuable stocks: about $465,000 per class A share, and that’s one of the most curious stock market facts out there.

Most valuable companies

There are extremely valuable businesses that take up a significant part of the market alone. Microsoft is a good example of such a company: with a total market cap of $1.9 trillion, it takes up roughly 2% of the global stock market. However, the most valuable company globally is Apple: its capitalization has recently reached $2.3 trillion.

Most popular exchanges

There are about 60 major stock exchanges in the world, but the largest exchange is located in the US: it’s the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that has a market cap of about $23 trillion. It is followed by another US-based exchange: NASDAQ. Its total capitalization is estimated at $16 trillion.

The number of stock traders

While the exact number of people trading stocks every day is unknown, some experts claim that there are up to 50 million stock traders in the world. However, only about 5 million of them are active on the market. The USA has the majority of them, and the second country with the most traders is China.