When people talk about the US stock market, they usually mean one of two exchanges.

The first is the New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE. 

It was founded in 1792 when a group of stockbrokers signed an agreement to trade securities among themselves under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. 

It is the oldest major exchange in the United States and, by total listed company market value, the largest exchange in the world. Companies like JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola, and Berkshire Hathaway are listed here.

The second is NASDAQ. It was founded in 1971 as the world’s first fully electronic stock exchange, meaning there was no physical trading floor from day one. 

All transactions happened through a computer network. That structure made it a natural home for technology companies when they started listing in the 1980s and 1990s. Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and NVIDIA are all NASDAQ-listed.

People sometimes assume the NYSE is for traditional companies and NASDAQ is for technology companies. That was more accurate in the past than it is today. Both exchanges now list companies across all sectors. What matters more to you as an investor is not which exchange a company is listed on but which index it belongs to. We will cover that in the next chapter.