Beginners Guide To NASDAQ

NASDAQ is relatively young but has been giving NYSE a run for its money. NASDAQ operates very differently than the NYSE as it works on a method called the double auction method. In this method the highest bidder competes with all the bidders on a buy and same goes for a sell.

In NASDAQ much like in the real world each broker or the dealer as you may want to call it has an inventory of shares which they are willing to sell and that means that they can easily assume that their inventory along with other broker’s inventory will be taken care of. In effect each order if fulfilled based on how much inventory or shares you are holding.

Now there are two types of orders market order and limit order. Let us say that you have a limit order which means that you are neither willing to buy above that set limit nor willing to sell below that price. Market order means that you are saying that at whatever price the dealer is holding the inventory the system should go ahead an buy that. So what happens when the dealer only has 500 shares and you place an order for buying 1000 shares at market price? For the fulfillment of this order you will get 500 shares of the order at the stated price and another 500 shares at the price the dealer says it got somebody to sell the shares to you. Now this price may be higher or below the price at which you got the initial 500 shares.

NASDAQ as you can see is the interdealer market represented by securities dealers and these dealers are called market makers. These dealers then compete with each other to post their best prices (both bid and ask). A normal non professional person can have access to this bid offers, ask size, size of each offer and they are called level II quotes. The system that provide the quotes is called Small Order Execution System.

NASDAQ is geared towards providing the small investors a favorable trading environment. On the other hand American Exchange also provides some options for small investors.

The stock exchange which provides capability for trading in penny stocks is the OTCBB. Penny stock trading is very risk and volatile.

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