The Financial Markets: What We Want You To Reach
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In economics, a financial market is a mechanism that allows people to easily buy and sell (trade) financial securities (such as stocks and bonds), commodities (such as precious metals or agricultural goods), and other fungible items of value at low transaction costs and at prices that reflect the efficient-market hypothesis.
Financial markets have evolved significantly over several hundred years and are undergoing constant innovation to improve liquidity.
Both general markets (where many commodities are traded) and specialized markets (where only one commodity is traded) exist. Markets work by placing many interested buyers and sellers in one "place", thus making it easier for them to find each other. An economy which relies primarily on interactions between buyers and sellers to allocate resources is known as a market economy in contrast either to a command economy or to a non-market economy such as a gift economy.
In finance, financial markets facilitate:
- The raising of capital (in the capital markets)
- The transfer of risk (in the derivatives markets)
- International trade (in the currency markets)
– and are used to match those who want capital to those who have it.
Typically a borrower issues a receipt to the lender promising to pay back the capital. These receipts are securities which may be freely bought or sold. In return for lending money to the borrower, the lender will expect some compensation in the form of interest or dividends.
Definition: Market
In economics, typically, the term market means the aggregate of possible buyers and sellers of a thing and the transactions between them.
The term "market" is sometimes used for what are more strictly exchanges, organizations that facilitate the trade in financial securities, e.g., a stock exchange or commodity exchange. This may be a physical location (like the NYSE) or an electronic system (like NASDAQ). Much trading of stocks takes place on an exchange; still, corporate actions (merger, spin off) are outside an exchange, while any two companies or people, for whatever reason, may agree to sell stock from the one to the other without using an exchange.
Trading of currencies and bonds is largely on a bilateral basis, although some bonds trade on a stock exchange, and people are building electronic systems for these as well, similar to stock exchanges.
Financial markets can be domestic or they can be international.
The financial markets can be divided into different subtypes:
- Capital markets which consist of:
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Stock markets, which provide financing through the issuance of shares or common stock, and enable the subsequent trading thereof.
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Bond markets, which provide financing through the issuance of bonds, and enable the subsequent trading thereof.
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Commodity markets, which facilitate the trading of commodities.
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Money markets, which provide short term debt financing and investment.
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Derivatives markets, which provide instruments for the management of financial risk.
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Futures markets, which provide standardized forward contracts for trading products at some future date; see also forward market.
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Insurance markets, which facilitate the redistribution of various risks.
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Foreign exchange markets, which facilitate the trading of foreign exchange.
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The capital markets consist of primary markets and secondary markets. Newly formed (issued) securities are bought or sold in primary markets. Secondary markets allow investors to sell securities that they hold or buy existing securities.
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To understand financial markets, let us look at what they are used for, i.e. what is their purpose?
Without financial markets, borrowers would have difficulty finding lenders themselves. Intermediaries such as banks help in this process. Banks take deposits from those who have money to save. They can then lend money from this pool of deposited money to those who seek to borrow. Banks popularly lend money in the form of loans and mortgages.
More complex transactions than a simple bank deposit require markets where lenders and their agents can meet borrowers and their agents, and where existing borrowing or lending commitments can be sold on to other parties. A good example of a financial market is a stock exchange. A company can raise money by selling shares to investors and its existing shares can be bought or sold.
The following table illustrates where financial markets fit in the relationship between lenders and borrowers:
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Relationship between lenders and borrowers
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Lenders Financial Intermediaries Financial Markets Borrowers
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Individuals
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Companies Banks
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Insurance Companies
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Pension Funds
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Mutual Funds
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Interbank
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Stock Exchange
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Money Market
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Bond Market
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Foreign Exchange Individuals
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Companies
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Central Government
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Municipalities
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Public Corporations
Many individuals are not aware that they are lenders, but almost everybody does lend money in many ways. A person lends money when he or she:
- puts money in a savings account at a bank;
- contributes to a pension plan;
- pays premiums to an insurance company;
- invests in government bonds; or
- invests in company shares.
Companies tend to be borrowers of capital. When companies have surplus cash that is not needed for a short period of time, they may seek to make money from their cash surplus by lending it via short term markets called money markets.
There are a few companies that have very strong cash flows. These companies tend to be lenders rather than borrowers. Such companies may decide to return cash to lenders (e.g. via a share buyback.) Alternatively, they may seek to make more money on their cash by lending it (e.g. investing in bonds and stocks.)
Borrowers
Individuals borrow money via bankers' loans for short term needs or longer term mortgages to help finance a house purchase.
Companies borrow money to aid short term or long term cash flows. They also borrow to fund modernization or future business expansion.
Governments often find their spending requirements exceed their tax revenues. To make up this difference, they need to borrow. Governments also borrow on behalf of nationalized industries, municipalities, local authorities and other public sector bodies. In the UK, the total borrowing requirement is often referred to as the Public sector net cash requirement (PSNCR).
Governments borrow by issuing bonds. In the UK, the government also borrows from individuals by offering bank accounts and Premium Bonds. Government debt seems to be permanent. Indeed the debt seemingly expands rather than being paid off. One strategy used by governments to reduce the value of the debt is to influence inflation.
Municipalities and local authorities may borrow in their own name as well as receiving funding from national governments. In the UK, this would cover an authority like Hampshire County Council.
Public Corporations typically include nationalized industries. These may include the postal services, railway companies and utility companies.
Many borrowers have difficulty raising money locally. They need to borrow internationally with the aid of Foreign exchange markets.
Derivative products
During the 1980s and 1990s, a major growth sector in financial markets is the trade in so called derivative products, or derivatives for short.
In the financial markets, stock prices, bond prices, currency rates, interest rates and dividends go up and down, creating risk. Derivative products are financial products which are used to control risk or paradoxically exploit risk. It is also called financial economics.
Currency markets
Seemingly, the most obvious buyers and sellers of currency are importers and exporters of goods. While this may have been true in the distant past,[when?] when international trade created the demand for currency markets, importers and exporters now represent only 1/32 of foreign exchange dealing, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
The picture of foreign currency transactions today shows:
- Banks/Institutions
- Speculators
- Government spending (for example, military bases abroad)
- Importers/Exporters
- Tourists
Analysis of financial markets
See Statistical analysis of financial markets, statistical finance
Much effort has gone into the study of financial markets and how prices vary with time. Charles Dow, one of the founders of Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal, enunciated a set of ideas on the subject which are now called Dow Theory. This is the basis of the so-called technical analysis method of attempting to predict future changes. One of the tenets of "technical analysis" is that market trends give an indication of the future, at least in the short term. The claims of the technical analysts are disputed by many academics, who claim that the evidence points rather to the random walk hypothesis, which states that the next change is not correlated to the last change.
The scale of changes in price over some unit of time is called the volatility. It was discovered by Benoît Mandelbrot that changes in prices do not follow a Gaussian distribution, but are rather modeled better by Lévy stable distributions. The scale of change, or volatility, depends on the length of the time unit to a power a bit more than 1/2. Large changes up or down are more likely than what one would calculate using a Gaussian distribution with an estimated standard deviation.
A new area of concern is the proper analysis of international market effects. As connected as today's global financial markets are, it is important to realize the there are both benefits and consequences to a global financial network. As new opportunities appear due to integration, so do the possibilities of contagion. This presents unique issues when attempting to analyze markets, as a problem can ripple through the entire connected global network very quickly. For example, a bank failure in one country can spread quickly to others, which proper analysis more difficult
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