NASDAQ STOCK EXCHANGE: NASDAQ (acronym National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations system) is an American stock market. It was founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), who divested it in a series of sales in 2000 and 2001. It is owned and operated by The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc. the stock of which was listed on its own stock exchange in 2002. NASDAQ is the largest electronic screen-based equity securities market in the United States. With approximately 3,200 companies, it lists more companies and on average trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market.

STANDARD AND POORS: Standard & Poor's operates as a financial services company. Its products and services include credit ratings, equity research, S&P indices, funds, risk solutions, governance services, evaluations, and data services. The company’s division, Capital IQ, provides information and workflow solutions to financial institutions, advisory firms, and corporations. Capital IQ provides integrated financial information and technology solutions, including auditable company financials, a screener combining financial and nonfinancial items, an integrated public and private capital market database, and various relationship development tools. The company serves institutional professionals, financial institutions, corporations, financial advisors, and individual investors worldwide. Standard & Poor's traces its history back to 1860, with the publication by Henry Varnum Poor of History of Railroads and Canals in the United States. This book was an attempt to compile comprehensive information about the financial and operational state of U.S. railroad companies. Henry Varnum went on to establish H.V. and H.W. Poor Co with his son, Henry William, and published updated versions of this book on an annual basis. In 1906 Luther Lee Blake founded the Standard Statistics Bureau, with the view to providing financial information on non-railroad companies. Instead of an annually published book Standard Statistics would use 5' x 7' cards, allowing for more frequent updates.

THE DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL: The Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DJI, also called the DJIA, Dow 30, or informally the Dow industrials, the Dow Jones or The Dow) is one of several stock market indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow. Dow compiled the index as a way to gauge the performance of the industrial component of America's stock markets. It is the oldest continuing U.S. market index, aside from the Dow Jones Transportation Average, which Dow also created. Today, the average consists of 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in the United States. The "industrial" portion of the name is largely historical — many of the 30 modern components have little to do with heavy industry. To compensate for the effects of stock splits and other adjustments, it is currently a scaled average, not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks — the sum of the component prices is divided by a divisor, which changes over time, to generate the value of the index.

NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), nicknamed the "Big Board", is a New York City-based stock exchange. It is the largest stock exchange in the world by dollar volume and the second largest by number of companies listed. Its share volume was exceeded by that of NASDAQ during the 1990s. The New York Stock Exchange has a global capitalization of $23.0 trillion as of September 30, 2006. The NYSE is operated by NYSE Euronext, which was formed by its merger with the fully electronic stock exchange Archipelago Holdings and Euronext. The New York Stock Exchange trading floor is located at 11 Wall Street, and is composed of five rooms used for the facilitation of trading. The main building, located at 18 Broad Street between the corners of Wall Street and Exchange Place, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978. NYSE Group merged with Euronext, and many of its operations (particularly IT and the trading platform) will be combined with that of the New York Stock Exchange and NYSE Arca.

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