London and New York Stock Exchanges/NASDAQ

Trading volumes on the London Stock Exchange, NYSE and the NASDAQ fell away by 53.9%, 36.6% and 42.9% respectively in 2009. Despite this, and despite the fact that emerging exchanges such as Shenzhen in China grew by more than 123%, the NYSE easily remains the worlds largest stock exchange in terms of trading volumes and by market capitalization the NYSE, NASDAQ and LSE populate three out of the five largest exchanges in the world. Here are some facts on three of the world's best known stock exchanges (year to date December 2009, data from International Federation of Stock Exchanges)

New York Stock Exchange

• Founded in 1817
• market capitalization $11,670bn (£7,537bn)
• 2,326 listed companies
• Value of share trading $17,521,119bn (£11,374,415bn)
• World's largest stock exchange

London Stock Exchange

• Founded in 1801
• market capitalization $2,681bn (£1,732bn)
• 2,713 listed companies
• value of share trading $1,771,811bn (£1,150,408bn)
• Largest stock exchange in Europe

NASDAQ

• Founded 1971
• market capitalization $3,295bn (£2,128bn)
• 2,807 listed companies
• value of share trading $13,608,077bn (£8,835,773bn)
• Largest electronic screen based equity securities trading market in the United States