Having trouble understanding the stock market? In this series of articles I am going to teach you everything that you will ever need to know about stock and the stock market.

In this part of my series on understanding the stock market I am going to tell you a little bit about the markets themselves. Basically the stock market is a centralized physical location where stocks are bought and sold. Here are the most important markets.

· The New York stock exchange - the largest and most well known exchange in the world. For all its fame the NYSE only trades about 1500 of the country's biggest stocks. This means that no company with less than $18 million in assets or less than 1.1 million issued shares need apply for listing.

· The American stock exchange - also based in New York the AMEX is the main rival of the NYSE in size and reputation. The AMEX trades around 900 of the country's biggest stocks and to be listed a company must maintain a minimum of $4 million in assets have issue a minimum of a half million shares of stock.

· Regional exchanges - fourteen exchanges located around the United States. The NYSE and AMEX can only trade a small amount of the total number of shares in the country because of this 14 smaller exchanges were created to help them.

· Over the counter - this is a term for stocks traded over a computerized network called the national market system. This is without a doubt the largest exchange, the vast majority of stocks do not trade in the above markets instead they are traded on the NMS.

· International exchanges - these are stock exchanges in other countries.

· Other markets - these are markets where the trading of other financial instruments such as futures, options, grains and money is conducted.