Primary versus secondary markets

The final pieces of jargon we need to deal with in this chapter are primary markets and secondary markets.

Primary market

The primary market is when shares, bonds or other financial instruments are issued for the first time and sold directly to investors. When a company sells its shares on a regulated exchange for the first time, this is known as the new issue market (NIM). The most common issue in the primary market is the initial public offering (IPO). When it is shares that are sold this is known as a flotation, where they are offered for sale to the public in new, young companies or well-established private companies, wishing to obtain funding for their company in the form of equity capital.

Companies already ...

Get Get Started in Shares now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.