Global Securities Markets: Navigating the World's Exchanges and OTC Markets

Preface

This book is Global Securities Markets 101. But it is not a dry textbook. It is full of rich history, interesting anecdotes, and understandable mathematical and legal concepts. There is no book quite like it anywhere that weaves together all the facets of the global securities market and tells the tale in plain readable English, at a high global level, and in less than 200 entertaining pages. And it is a feature of this book, like the hub of a wheel arrayed with spokes, to point the reader to the right materials by Internet link or further reading sources for more information on any given topic.

The lodestar for this guidebook is the familiar five-point star known as a pentagram. For many (Christians, Jews, and Taoists, to name a few), the pentagram is a symbol of faith. For ancient Greeks, the pentagram represented mathematical perfection. And for some, a pentagram contains dark forces and magic. In many ways, the global securities market embodies everything in the symbology associated with a pentagram star. Markets exist on the faith that one party will exchange with another. Markets thrive on mathematical precision. And markets can be mysterious.

However, the global securities market is not sorcery. Using the pentagram illustration featured in Chapter 1, concise explanations, and other graphic presentations, this book seeks to demystify the global securities markets for market participants as well as the educated investor.

There is an emphasis on history, because, as ...