Australian Securities Exchange

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is Australia's primary securities exchange. It was created by the merger of the Australian Stock Exchange and the Sydney Futures Exchange in July 2006.

Today, ASX has an average daily turnover of $4.685 billion and a market capitalisation of around A$1.2 trillion, making it one of the world's top-10 listed exchange groups, comparable to the New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Bourse.

ASX Group is a market operator, clearing house and payments system facilitator. It also oversees compliance with its operating rules, promotes standards of corporate governance among Australia's listed companies and helps to educate retail investors.

Australia's capital markets

• Financial development - Australia was ranked 5th out of 57 of the world's leading financial systems and capital markets by the World Economic Forum;
• Equity market - the 8th largest in the world (based on free-float market capitalisation) and the 2nd largest in Asia-Pacific, with A$1.2 trillion market capitalisation and average daily secondary trading of over A$5 billion a day;
• Bond market - 3rd largest debt market in the Asia Pacific;
• Derivatives market - largest fixed income derivatives in the Asia-Pacific region;
• Foreign exchange market - the Australian foreign exchange market is the 7th largest in the world in terms of global turnover, while the Australian dollar is the 5th most traded currency and the AUD/USD the 4th most traded currency pair;
• Funds management - Due in large part to its compulsory superannuation system, Australia has the largest pool of funds under management in the Asia-Pacific region, and the 4th largest in the world.

Regulation

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has responsibility for the supervision of real-time trading on Australia's domestic licensed financial markets and the supervision of the conduct by participants (including the relationship between participants and their clients) on those markets. ASIC also supervises ASX's own compliance as a public company with ASX Listing Rules.

ASX Compliance is an ASX subsidiary company that is responsible for monitoring and enforcing ASX-listed companies' compliance with the ASX operating rules.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has oversight of the ASX's clearing and settlement facilities for financial system stability.

Products

Products and services available for trading on ASX include shares, futures, exchange traded options, warrants, contracts for difference, exchange-traded funds, real estate investment trusts, listed investment companies and interest rate securities.

The biggest stocks traded on the ASX, in terms of market capitalisation, include BHP Billiton, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac, Telstra, Rio Tinto, National Australia Bank and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.

The major market index is the S&P/ASX 200, an index made up of the top 200 shares in the ASX. This supplanted the previously significant All Ordinaries index, which still runs parallel to the S&P ASX 200. Both are commonly quoted together. Other indices for the bigger stocks are the S&P/ASX 100 and S&P/ASX 50.