The New York Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in the world by dollar volume. It has more than 2,700 listed securities. The combined capitalization of the NYSE is more than $25 trillion.

Members of the NYSE are brokers who actively trade stocks on the floor. Stocks were originally traded through open outcry. A floor broker would execute the order to buy or sell a stock when he found a party willing to complete the other part of the transaction. Today more than half of the trades are conducted electronically, although floor traders still set prices and deal in high volume institutional trading.

The NYSE began in 1792, formed through an agreement of 24 stock brokers under a buttonwood tree (it's known as the Buttonwood Agreement) at 68 Wall Street in New York. The NYSE became a publicly held company in 2005 after acquiring the electronic trading exchange known as Archipelago.