NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is currently the second largest trading market in the world as market capitalization. At the beginning of 2011 the market capitalization of NASDAQ reached a staggering 4.7 trillion dollars. The number of companies listed is 2,872 and the total trading volume is 982 billion dollars, the largest electronic stock exchange trading volume in the world.

The history of the American stock exchange market starts with National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) that founded NASDAQ in 1971. This was the first electronic market ever but it was more like a computer message board. As NASDAQ started to actually trade and introduced automated trading systems it evolved in a real stock market.

The mutual funds represent a collective form of investment. The investors put their money all together in a fund from which are bought stocks, bonds or other short-term financial instruments.

The mutual funds are managed as a corporation, with a board of directors supervising the whole activity. The fund manager is the person that decides the financial instruments that are bought or sold in order to fulfill the fund’s objectives and policies.

Nowadays all online forex trading platforms also offer a wide range of stocks. Trading stocks is quite similar to the forex trading but there are some differences between the two types of assets. First of all the currencies’ rates fluctuate more encouraging speculative trading or short term trading. The stocks on the other hand are better for long term investments rather than for speculation.

The two types of markets are adapted to the traders needs so in forex the commissions are lower than the stocks commissions. The forex market is very dynamic, with so many transactions taking place in each day that the commissions rapidly reached very low rates.