My Internship on Wall Street
by Justine Gross
I was very fortunate for an internship in a major company on Wall Street and in fact even got an extension. I learned a lot and felt that once I completed my undergrad I could apply for specific positions with a good chance for a good job.
Business is an important part of society producing the goods and services needed and is generally privately owned in the US. In some countries government own and run businesses and in others in the so-called mixed economy, businesses can be both owned by both entities in the private and public sectors.
One of the most important forms of business is corporation and there are many of these in the US ranging from small to medium to even large, examples of which are Microsoft, Apple and Google. Corporations are companies. The shares of companies can be owned privately or publicly. In case of the former, the stocks are privately traded whereas in case of the latter they are publicly traded and this is where the stock market comes in.
Wall Street is more than just a street; it stands for more, much more. To find out, I consulted the famous Investopedia:
Although Wall Street and its surrounding southern Manhattan neighborhood—known to locals as “the Financial District”—remains an important location where a number of financial institutions are based, the globalization and digitization of finance and investment have led to many American broker-dealers, registered investment advisors, and investment companies being established around the country.
Still, “Wall Street” remains a collective name for the financial markets, the companies that trade publicly, and the investment community itself: stock exchanges, investment and commercial banks, brokerages and broker-dealers, financial services, and underwriting firms. It’s a globally recognized expression, symbolizing the U.S. investment industry and to some extent the U.S. financial system. Both the New York Stock Exchange (the largest equities-based exchange in the world) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—arguably the most important regional bank of the Federal Reserve System—are based in the Wall Street area.
The birth of stock exchanges: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/stock-exchange-history.asp
What is the NYSE: The New York Stock Exchange is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at more than US$30.1 trillion. (Wikipedia)
The way stock trading has changed: A floor trader is an exchange member who executes transactions from the floor of the exchange, exclusively for their own account. Floor traders used to use the open outcry method in the pit of a commodity or stock exchange, but now most of them use electronic trading systems and do not appear in the pit.
Stocks can be traded individually or via indexes, the most important ones are the Down Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ and the S&P.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average: The DJIA was created to measure the movements of the leading companies in the United States engaged in industrial activities. It uses the price-weighted index, meaning that stocks with a higher share price carry a greater weight in the index than stocks with a low share price.
National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations
Nasdaq is a global electronic marketplace for buying and selling securities. Originally an acronym for “National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations“—it was a subsidiary of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
The NASDAQ stock exchange: The Nasdaq Stock Market is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is ranked second on the list of stock exchanges by market capitalization of shares traded, behind the New York Stock Exchange. (Wikipedia)
The Nasdaq Composite Index is the market capitalization-weighted index of over 3,000 common equities listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. (Investopedia)
S&P: The Standard and Poor’s 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. Wikipedia
Investment banking compared to commercial banking: the latter deals with day-to-day banking transactions whereas the former with investing basically in stocks and bonds. Case in point JP Morgan Chase.
Stocks compared to bonds
Stock symbols and prices: https://www.nyse.com/listings_directory/stock
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks
https://finance.yahoo.com/lookup/
Case studies: Morgan Stanley https://www.morganstanley.com/contact-us.html; ; Goldman Sachs https://www.goldmansachs.com/
Tracking the stock market: https://finance.yahoo.com/
Efforts are made to track the market overall by looking at the composites which can be affected by factors such as conditions of the economy and decisions of the US Federal Reserve. Individual stocks fluctuate depending on the company involved. For example, if a company does well, its stock is likely to go up. There is also the effect of speculations and so, all in all, rational as well as irrational factors. Throughout the trading day, stocks go up and down based on the law of supply and demand.
More to look into
ETF
Wealth management, hedge fund, portfolio and risk
Long position vs short position: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/whats-difference-between-long-and-short-position-market.asp
Trading of commodities including futures
The US Federal Reserve; foreign currency; foreign exchanges such as London, Shanghai etc.
Currency goes digital crypto currency, bitcoin