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Financial market participants
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In order to understand the financial markets it is important to identify those that participate in them. There are two basic financial market participant categories, Investor vs. Speculator and Institutional vs. Retail.
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An investor is any party that makes an Investment.
However, the term has taken on a specific meaning in finance to describe the particular types of people and companies that regularly purchase equity or debt securities for financial gain in exchange for funding an expanding company. Less frequently the term is applied to parties who purchase real estate, currency, commodity derivatives, personal property, or other assets.
Speculation, in the narrow sense of financial speculation, involves the buying, holding, selling, and short-selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, collectibles, real estate, derivatives or any valuable financial instrument to profit from fluctuations in its price as opposed to buying it for use or for income via methods such as dividends or interest. Speculation or agiotage represents one of three market roles in western financial markets, distinct from hedging, long term investing and arbitrage. Speculators in an asset have no intention to have long term exposure to the asset.
An institutional investor is an investor, such as a bank, insurance company, retirement fund, hedge fund, or mutual fund, that is financially sophisticated and makes large investments, often held in very large portfolios of investments. Because of their sophistication, institutional investors may often participate in private placements of securities, in which certain aspects of the securities laws may be inapplicable.
A retail investor is an individual investor possessing shares of a given security. Retail investors can be further divided into two categories of share ownership.
1. A Beneficial Shareholder is a retail investor who holds shares of their securities in the account of a bank or broker, also known as “in Street Name.” The broker is in possession of the securities on behalf of the underlying shareholder.
2. A Registered Shareholder is a retail investor who holds shares of their securities directly through the issuer or its transfer agent. Many registered shareholders have physical copies of their stock certificates.
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