Is there a standard for naming stocks exchanges?  Is there a list of abbreviated names?
Wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges
I think Infochimps has what you are looking for: NYSE and NASDAQ. If you check out China Stock Markets Web provides details on all things that trade on there. It covers the Hang Seng Index, SSE Index, and SSE Component Index. There is also tons of information for investors on the exchange website here. "I mean, I'd say ""no shit"". The model is easy to reproduce (see the inverse model proposed by CHX and the new NYSE American), and people don't have a real incentive to trade there. IEX's main selling point to the buy side was the reduced price impact order router, which ultimately went away when they became an exchange.  Listings could be interesting, but I can't see why any company that doesn't have some sort of statement to make would want to list there versus the big two, or BATS. Hell, even BATS, a much more established market, has had a hard time drawing listings.  I'm glad they've seen a small bump in market share in the last few months, but I can't see them becoming one of the big three players any time soon (especially after having shat all over the industry during their launch period).  Side note: The UTP SIP (and soon the CTA SIP) are both **much** faster than when IEX went live. Turns out inside updates via the SIP are received faster than the prop market data feed, and faster than updates received over an order entry connection. Under these circumstances the street knows a trade occurred before the participants in the trade. This information asymmetry often results in market makers getting run the hell over, and makes them less likely to quote at the inside on your market." "Shares do not themselves carry any identity. Official shareholders are kept at the registrar.  In the UK, this may be kept up to date and publicly accessible.  In the US, it is not, but this doesn't matter because most shares are held ""in street name"". For a fully detailed history, one would need access to all exchange records, brokerage records, and any trades transacted off exchange. These records are almost totally unavailable." "Yes there are huge number of parts in the chain. Entire careers can be made out of handling clearing and settlement (back office) work for banks, exchanges, and trading houses. Even more so in the old days when this had to be done by hand, but obviously now everything is electronic. I can provide some insight into your questions, at least on the trading side.  Brokers in many cases have their own brokers or their own trading operations. They will have their own order entry and risk control systems, so that is all proprietary, but it usually doesn't involve more than send buy/sell Y shares of name X to venue Z at price P with extra instructions A,B,C,D,E. Eventually an order will make its way to a direct market participant who sends an electronic order directly to an exchange.  Note that when you say market, you should be referring to such ""exchanges"". In the US these are the NYSE, NASDAQ, and so on. When you are talking about futures there is the CME, CBOT, and so on. In Europe there is the EUREX and so on. The ""market"" refers to all these exchanges together which all have their own order mechanisms and matching engines. In many cases exchanges will route orders to other exchanges depending on the specific country's trading rules. Exchanges compete with each other by fee and liquidity offerings, which are shouldered directly by market participants.  Another detail is that each market participant has its own clearing firm, which has prior credit lines established with the market participant and a central clearing house. Like you said as soon as an order is matched, the exchange where the order takes place hands the trade over to the clearing house where the trade is then settled between the clearing firms representing either side of the trade. Clearing disputes happen at this step." I don't think that you will be able to find a list of every owner for a given stock. There are probably very few people who would know this. One source would be whoever sends out the shareholder meeting mailers.  I suspect that the company itself would know this, the exchange to a lesser extent, and possibly the brokerage houses to a even lesser extent. Consider these resources: You can average the betas across the different cross listings.  EX:   Exchange 1 - Beta .8  Exchange 2 - Beta .6  Exchange 3 - Beta .7  (.8 + .6 + .7) / 3 =  avg Beta .7  You can do simple average as based above or you can do a weighted average and take into account other factors. "Nearly every country has its own exchange because so many countries have their own currency, and currency permeates every part of an exchange's business.   Generally, an exchange will support transaction and settlement only in local currency.  Securities (except those that explicitly enable FX trading) are denominated and will trade in a single currency-- you can only buy a share of IBM in U.S. dollars.  Securities trading always seeks to be a clean, frictionless, scalable process, and adding cross-currency translation to the mix would just complicate things.  So it's one exchange, one currency. In most countries, citizens and even businesses are largely restricted to having bank accounts in local currency.  There are various political reasons for this, but there it is:  it is difficult or impossible to open a domestic bank account in a foreign-denominated currency.  A public company headquartered in a given country will be required to publish financial statements in local currency, will be more likely to do business with the local citizenry and businesses in that currency, and so will likely look for investors from that same pool-- which generally means listing in local currency, which means on an exchange in that country. There are exceptions, of course.  Big multinationals do business all over the world, and many seek investors all over the world as well.  Mechanisms have been created to permit this (American Depositary Receipts or ADRs, for example).  But once again, cross-currency translation makes things more complicated, so ADRs and their like are only practical for very big international players. As to why there may be many exchanges in a single country, IMO Nick R has it right.  Read ""Flash Boys""; many market makers profit from trading between exchanges, and so have an interest in there being many of them.  And in the U.S., regulators have expressed an interest in ""innovation"" in the exchange space, and so permit them.  There is also an argument to be made against having a single ""Too Big To Fail"" exchange just like the argument for banks, but I wouldn't call that a ""reason"" for the current state of affairs." The easiest route for you to go down will be to consult wikipedia, which will provide a comprehensive list of all US stock exchanges (there are plenty more than the ones you list!). Then visit the websites for those that are of interest to you, where you will find a list of holiday dates along with the trading schedule for specific products and the settlement dates where relevant. In answer to the other part of your question, yes, a stock can trade on multiple exchanges. Typically (unless you instruct otherwise), your broker will route your order to the exchange where it can be matched at the most favorable price to you at that time. If the share is listed on a stock exchange that creates liquidity and orderly sales with specialist market makers, such as the NYSE, there will always be a counterparty to trade with, though they will let the price rise or fall to meet other open interest.  On other exchanges, or in closely held or private equity scenarios, this is not necessarily the case (NASDAQ has market maker firms that maintain the bid-ask spread and can do the same thing with their own inventory as the specialists, but are not required to by the brokerage rules as the NYSE brokers are).  The NYSE has listing requirements of at least 1.1 million shares, so there will not be a case with only 100 shares on this exchange. I've looked into Thinkorswim; my father uses it. Although better than eTrade, it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Interactive Brokers is a name I had heard a long time ago but forgotten. Thank you for that, it seems to be just what I need. Different exchanges sometimes offer different order types, and of course have different trading fees.  But once a trade is finished, it should not matter where it was executed. "Google Finance certainly has data for Tokyo Stock Exchange (called TYO on Google) listings.  You could create a ""portfolio"" consisting of the stocks you care about and then visit it once per day (or write a script to do so)." I can't provide a list, but when I took out my Stocks and Shares, I extensively researched for a good, cheap, flexible option and I went with FoolShareDealing.  I've found them to be good, and their online trading system works well.  I hope that's still the case. "You cannot determine this solely by the ticker length. However, there are some conventions that may help steer you there. Nasdaq has 2-4 base letters BATS has 4 base letters NYSE equity securities have 1-4 base letters. NYSE Mkt (formerly Amex) have 1-4 base letters. NYSE Arca has 4 base letters OTC has 4 base letters. Security types other than equities may have additional letters added, and each exchange (and data vendors) have different conventions for how this is handled. So if you see ""T"" for a US-listed security it would be only be either NASDAQ, NYSE or NYSE Mkt. If you see ""ANET"" then you cannot tell which exchange it is listed on.  (In this case, ANET Arista Networks is actually a NYSE stock). For some non-equity security types, such as hybrids, and debt instruments, some exchanges add ""P"" to the end for ""preferreds"" (Nasdaq and OTC) and NYSE/NYSE Mkt have a variety of methods (including not adding anything) to the ticker.  Examples include NYSE:TFG, NYSEMkt:IPB, Nasdaaq: AGNCP, Nasdaq:OXLCN.  It all becomes rather confusing given the changes in conventions over the years. Essentially, you require data that provides you with ticker, listing location and security type. The exchanges allocate security tickers in conjunction with the SEC so there are no overlaps.  eg. The same ticker cannot represent two different securities. However, tickers can be re-used.  For example, the ticker AB has been used by the following companies:"