Australian Securities Exchange Ltd or ASX, is an Australian
public company that operates Australia's primary
securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
as, or confused within Australia as,
The Sydney Stock Exchange, a separate entity). The ASX was formed on 1 April 1987, through incorporation under legislation of the Australian Parliament as an amalgamation of the six state securities exchanges, and merged with the Sydney Futures Exchange in 2006.
Today, ASX has an average daily turnover of A$4.685
billion and a market capitalisation of around A$1.6
trillion, making it one of the
world's top 20 listed exchange groups.
ASX Clear is the clearing house for all shares, structured products, warrants and ASX Equity Derivatives.
Overview
ASX Group is a market operator, clearing house and payments system facilitator. It also oversees compliance with its operating rules, promotes standards of corporate governance among Australia's listed companies and helps to educate retail investors.
;Australia's capital markets
* Financial development – Australia was ranked 5th out of 57 of the world's leading financial systems and capital markets by the World Economic Forum;
* Equity market – the 8th largest in the world (based on free-float market capitalisation) and the 2nd largest in Asia-Pacific, with A$1.2 trillion market capitalisation and average daily secondary trading of over A$5 billion a day;
* Bond market – 3rd largest debt market in the Asia Pacific;
* Derivatives market – largest fixed income derivatives in the Asia-Pacific region;
*
Foreign exchange market
The foreign exchange market (Forex, FX, or currency market) is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This market determines foreign exchange rates for every currency. It includes all aspec ...
– the Australian foreign exchange market is the 7th largest in the world in terms of global turnover, while the Australian dollar is the 5th most traded currency and the AUD/USD the 4th most traded
currency pair;
* Funds management – Due in large part to its compulsory superannuation system, Australia has the largest pool of funds under management in the Asia-Pacific region, and the 4th largest in the world. Its primary markets are the
AQUA Markets.
;Regulation
The
Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has responsibility for the supervision of real-time trading on Australia's domestic licensed financial markets and the supervision of the conduct by participants (including the relationship between participants and their clients) on those markets. ASIC also supervises ASX's own compliance as a public company with ASX Listing Rules.
ASX Compliance is an ASX subsidiary company that is responsible for monitoring and enforcing ASX-listed companies' compliance with the ASX operating rules.
The
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has oversight of the ASX's clearing and settlement facilities for financial system stability.
;Products
Products and services available for trading on ASX include shares, futures, exchange traded options, warrants, contracts for difference, exchange-traded funds, real estate investment trusts, listed investment companies and interest rate securities.
The biggest stocks traded on the ASX, in terms of
market capitalisation, include
BHP,
Commonwealth Bank
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), or CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of financial services including retail, busines ...
,
Westpac,
Telstra,
Rio Tinto,
National Australia Bank
National Australia Bank (abbreviated NAB, branded nab) is one of the four largest financial institutions in Australia (colloquially referred to as "The Big Four") in terms of market capitalisation, earnings and customers. NAB was ranked 21st-la ...
and
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.
The major market index is the
S&P/ASX 200, an index made up of the top 200 shares in the ASX. This supplanted the previously significant
All Ordinaries index, which still runs parallel to the S&P ASX 200. Both are commonly quoted together. Other indices for the bigger stocks are the S&P/ASX 100 and
S&P/ASX 50.
History
The origins of the ASX date back to the mid-1800s when six separate exchanges were established in Australia's state capital cities of
Melbourne,
Victoria, (1861),
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
,
New South Wales (1871),
Hobart
Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
,
Tasmania (1882),
Brisbane,
Queensland (1884),
Adelaide,
South Australia (1887) and
Perth,
Western Australia (1889). A further exchange in
Launceston, Tasmania, merged into the Hobart exchange.
In November 1903 the first interstate conference was held to coincide with the
Melbourne Cup. The exchanges then met on an informal basis until 1937 when the Australian Associated Stock Exchanges (AASE) was established, with representatives from each exchange. Over time the AASE established uniform listing rules, broker rules, and commission rates.
Trading was conducted by a call system, where an exchange employee called the names of each company and brokers bid or offered on each. In the 1960s this changed to a post system. Exchange employees called "chalkies" wrote bids and offers in chalk on
blackboard
A blackboard (also known as a chalkboard) is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulphate or calcium carbonate, known, when used for this purpose, as chalk. Blackboards were originally made of ...
s continuously, and recorded transactions made.
The ASX (Australian Stock Exchange Limited) was formed in 1987 by legislation of the Australian Parliament which enabled the amalgamation of six independent stock exchanges that formerly operated in the state capital cities. After demutualisation the ASX was the first exchange in the world to have its shares quoted on its own market. The ASX was listed on 14 October 1998. On 7 July 2006 the Australian Stock Exchange merged with SFE Corporation, holding company for the Sydney Futures Exchange.
Timeline of significant events
1861: Ten years after the official advent of the
Gold Rush, Australia's first stock exchange was formed in Melbourne. In the 1850s Victoria was Australia's gold mining centre, its population increasing from 80,000 in 1851 to 540,000 in 1861.
1871: Thirty years after it lit the first gas street light in Sydney, the
Australian Gas Light Company took its place in history again, becoming the second company to list on the Sydney Stock Exchange.
1885: Two years after the Broken Hill Mining Company (private company) was established by a syndicate of seven men from the
Mount Gipps Station
Mount Gipps Station most commonly known as Mount Gipps is a pastoral lease that operates as a sheep station in north west New South Wales.
It is situated about north of Broken Hill and north east of Mannahill in the outback of New South ...
, the company was incorporated to become the
Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP). In 1885, BHP listed on the Melbourne Stock Exchange.
1937: The Australian Associated Stock Exchanges (AASE) was established in 1937. Since 1903 the state stock exchanges had met on an informal basis, but in 1936 Sydney took the lead in formalising the association. Initially this involved the exchanges in Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart and Sydney. Melbourne and Perth joined soon after. Through the AASE the exchanges gradually brought in common listing requirements for companies and uniform brokerage and other rules for stockbroking firms. They also set the ground rules for commissions and the flotation of government and semi-government loan raisings.
1938: Publication of the first share price index.
1939: Sydney Stock Exchange closed for the first time due to the declaration of
World War II.
1960: Sydney Futures Exchange began trading as Sydney Greasy Wool Futures Exchange (SGWFE). Its original goal was to provide Australian wool traders with hedging facilities in their own country. SGWFE offered a single contract of greasy wool that by the end of the year had traded 19,042 lots.
1969–1970: The
Poseidon bubble (a mining boom triggered by a nickel discovery in Western Australia) caused Australian mining shares to soar and then crash, prompting regulatory recommendations that ultimately led to Australia's national companies and securities legislation.
1976: The Australian Options Market was established, trading
call option
In finance, a call option, often simply labeled a "call", is a contract between the buyer and the seller of the call option to exchange a security at a set price. The buyer of the call option has the right, but not the obligation, to buy an ...
s.
1980: The separate Melbourne and Sydney stock exchange indices were replaced by Australian Stock Exchange indices.
1984: Brokers' commission rates were deregulated. Commissions have gradually fallen ever since, with rates today as low as 0.12% or 0.05% from discount internet-based brokers.
1984: Sydney Stock Exchange closed due to heavy rain and flooding on 9 November 1984 with 70 millimetres of rain falling in one half-hour. All trading on the floor of the Sydney Exchange was suspended throughout Friday. Damage totaled $2 million and repairs took more than six months, with new carpet laid and cables and computers replaced.
Stockbrokers who had taken advantage of joint access were able to trade on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. And, with the Sydney trading floor closed by floodwaters, the Melbourne Exchange enjoyed its busiest trading day for the year. After that episode a back-up site was established out side the Sydney CBD.
1987: The Australian Stock Exchange Limited (ASX) was formed on 1 April 1987, through incorporation under legislation of the Australian Parliament. The formation of the national stock exchange involved the amalgamation of the six independent stock exchanges that had operated in the states' capital cities.
Launch of the Stock Exchange Automated Trading System (SEATS). It was a far cry from the original system which dated back over 100 years. During that time there had been three different forms of trading on the Australian stock exchanges. The earliest was the auction-based call system, which saw a stock exchange employee (the caller) call the name of each listed security in turn while members bid, offered, sold or bought the stock at each call. This system proved inadequate to handle the increased volume of trading during the mining booms. It was replaced by the 'post' system in the early 1960s, which involved stocks being quoted on 'posts' or 'boards'. 'Chalkies' were employed by the Stock Exchange and it was their function to record in chalk the bids and offers of the operators (employees of stockbrokers) and the sales made. This system stayed in place until 1987.
1990: A
warrants
Warrant may refer to:
* Warrant (law), a form of specific authorization
** Arrest warrant, authorizing the arrest and detention of an individual
** Search warrant, a court order issued that authorizes law enforcement to conduct a search for eviden ...
market was established.
1993: Fixed-interest securities were added (see
Interest rate market below). Also in 1993, the FAST system of accelerated settlement was established, and the following year the CHESS system (see
Settlement below) was introduced, superseding FAST.
1994: The Sydney Futures Exchange announced trading in
futures
Futures may mean:
Finance
*Futures contract, a tradable financial derivatives contract
*Futures exchange, a financial market where futures contracts are traded
* ''Futures'' (magazine), an American finance magazine
Music
* ''Futures'' (album), a ...
over individual ASX stocks. The ASX responded with the
Low Exercise Price Option or LEPO (see below). The SFE went to court, claiming that LEPOs were futures and therefore that the ASX could not offer them. The court held they were options and so LEPOs were introduced in 1995.
1995:
Stamp duty
Stamp duty is a tax that is levied on single property purchases or documents (including, historically, the majority of legal documents such as cheques, receipts, military commissions, marriage licences and land transactions). A physical revenu ...
on share transactions was halved from 0.3% to 0.15%. The ASX had agreed with the
Queensland State Government to locate staff in
Brisbane in exchange for the stamp duty reduction there, and the other states followed suit so as not to lose brokerage business to Queensland. In 2000 stamp duty was abolished in all states as part of the introduction of the
GST GST may refer to:
Taxes
* General sales tax
* Goods and Services Tax, the name for the value-added tax in several jurisdictions:
** Goods and services tax (Australia)
** Goods and Services Tax (Canada)
** Goods and Services Tax (Hong Kong)
** ...
.
1996: The exchange members (brokers etc.) voted to
demutualise
Demutualization is the process by which a customer-owned mutual organization (''mutual'') or co-operative changes legal form to a joint stock company. It is sometimes called stocking or privatization. As part of the demutualization process, memb ...
. The exchange was incorporated as ASX Limited and in 1998 the company was listed on the ASX itself, with the
Australian Securities & Investments Commission enforcing the listing rules for ASX Limited.
1997: Electronic trading commences as the option market moves from floor to screen. A phased transition to the electronic CLICK system for derivatives began.
1998: ASX demutualised to become a listed company. It was the first exchange in the world to demutualise and list on its own market, a trend that has been imitated by several other exchanges over the years. The Australian Mutual Provident Society began in 1849 as an organisation offering life insurance. Now known as
AMP it became a publicly listed company on the ASX in 1998.
2000: In October, ASX acquires a 15% stake in the trading and order management software company
IRESS (formerly BridgeDFS Ltd).
2001: Stamp duty on marketable securities abolished.
2006: The ASX announced a merger with the Sydney Futures Exchange, the primary derivatives exchange in Australia.
Trading systems
ASX Group has two trading platforms – ASX Trade, which facilitates the trading of ASX equity securities and ASX Trade24 for derivative securities trading.
All ASX equity securities are traded on screen on ASX Trade. ASX Trade is a NASDAQ OMX ultra-low latency trading platform based on NASDAQ OMX's Genium INET system, which is used by many exchanges around the world. It is one of the fastest and most functional multi-asset trading platforms in the world, delivering latency down to ~250 microseconds.
ASX Trade24 is ASX global trading platform for derivatives. It is globally distributed with network access points (gateways) located in Chicago, New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Melbourne. It also allows for true 24-hour trading, and simultaneously maintains two active trading days which enables products to be opened for trading in the new trading day in one time zone while products are still trading under the previous day.
;Opening times
The normal trading or business days of the ASX are week-days, Monday to Friday. ASX does not trade on national public holidays: New Year's Day (1 January), Australia Day (26 January, and observed on this day or the first business day after this date), Good Friday (that varies each year), Easter Monday, Anzac day (25 April), Queen's birthday (June), Christmas Day (25 December) and Boxing Day (26 December).
On each trading day there is a pre-market session from 7:00am to 10:00am
AEST
Australia uses three main time zones: Australian Western Standard Time (AWST; UTC+08:00), Australian Central Standard Time (ACST; UTC+09:30), and Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST; UTC+10:00). Time is regulated by the individual state gov ...
and a normal trading session from 10:00am to 4:00pm AEST. The market opens alphabetically in
single-price auctions, phased over the first ten minutes, with a small random time built in to prevent exact prediction of the first trades. There is also a single-price auction between 4:10pm and 4:12pm to set the daily closing prices.
Settlement
Security holders hold shares in one of two forms, both of which operate as uncertificated holdings, rather than through the issue of physical
share certificates:
* Clearing House Electronic Sub-register System (CHESS). The investor's controlling participant (normally a broker) sponsors the client into CHESS. The security holder is given a "holder identification number" (HIN) and monthly statements are sent to the security holder from the CHESS system when there is a movement in their holding that month.
* Issuer-sponsored. The company's share register administers the security holder's holding and issues the investor with a security-holder reference number (SRN) which may be quoted when selling.
Holdings may be moved from issuer-sponsored to CHESS or between different brokers by electronic message initiated by the controlling participant.
Short selling
Short selling of shares is permitted on the ASX, but only among designated stocks and with certain conditions:
* ASX trading participants (brokers) must report all daily gross short sales to ASX. The report will aggregate the gross short sales as reported by each trading participant at an individual stock level.
* ASX publishes aggregate gross short sales to ASX participants and the general public.
Many brokers do not offer short selling to small private investors. LEPOs can serve as an equivalent, while
contracts for difference (CFDs) offered by third-party providers are another alternative.
In September 2008, ASIC suspended nearly all forms of short selling due to concerns about market stability in the ongoing
global financial crisis. The ban on covered short selling was lifted in May 2009.
Also, in the biggest change for ASX in 15 years, ASTC Settlement Rule 10.11.12 was introduced, which requires the broker to provide stocks when settlement is due, otherwise the broker must buy the stock on the market to cover the shortfall. The rule requires that if a Failed Settlement Shortfall exists on the second business day after the day on which the Rescheduled Batch Instruction was originally scheduled for settlement (that is, generally on T+5), the delivering settlement participant must either:
* close out the Failed Settlement Shortfall on the next business day by purchasing the number of Financial Products of the relevant class equal to the shortfall; or
* acquire under a securities lending arrangement the number of Financial Products of the relevant class equal to the shortfall and deliver those Financial Products in Batch Settlement no more than two business days later.
Options
Options
Option or Options may refer to:
Computing
*Option key, a key on Apple computer keyboards
*Option type, a polymorphic data type in programming languages
* Command-line option, an optional parameter to a command
*OPTIONS, an HTTP request method
...
on leading shares are traded on the ASX, with standardised sets of strike prices and expiry dates. Liquidity is provided by market makers who are required to provide quotes. Each market maker is assigned two or more stocks. A stock can have more than one market maker, and they compete with one another. A market maker may choose one or both of:
* Make a market continuously, on a set of 18 options.
* Make a market in response to a quote request, in any option up to 9 months out.
In both cases there is a minimum quantity (5 or 10 contracts depending on the shares) and a maximum spread permitted.
Due to the higher risks in options, brokers must check clients' suitability before allowing them to trade options. Clients may both take (i.e. buy) and write (i.e. sell) options. For written positions, the client must put up
margin.
Interest rate market
The ASX interest rate market is the set of
corporate bond
A corporate bond is a bond issued by a corporation in order to raise financing for a variety of reasons such as to ongoing operations, M&A, or to expand business. The term is usually applied to longer-term debt instruments, with maturity of ...
s,
floating rate notes, and bond-like
preference shares listed on the exchange. These securities are traded and settled in the same way as ordinary shares, but the ASX provides information such as their maturity, effective interest rate, etc., to aid comparison.
Futures
The Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) was the 10th largest
derivatives
The derivative of a function is the rate of change of the function's output relative to its input value.
Derivative may also refer to:
In mathematics and economics
*Brzozowski derivative in the theory of formal languages
*Formal derivative, an ...
exchange in the world, providing derivatives in interest rates, equities, currencies and commodities. The SFE is now part of ASX and its most active products are:
*SPI 200 Futures – Futures contracts on an index representing the largest 200 stocks on the Australian Stock Exchange by market capitalisation.
*AU 90-day Bank Accepted Bill Futures – Australia's equivalent of T-Bill futures.
*3-Year Bond Futures – Futures contracts on Australian 3-year bonds.
*10-Year Bond Futures – Futures contracts on Australian 10-year bonds.
The ASX trades futures over the ASX 50, ASX 200 and ASX property indexes, and over grain,
electricity and
wool. Options over grain futures are also traded.
Market indices
The ASX maintains
stock indexes concerning stocks traded on the exchange in conjunction with
Standard & Poor's
S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is con ...
. There is a hierarchy of index groups called the
S&P/ASX 20,
S&P/ASX 50, S&P/ASX 100,
S&P/ASX 200 and
S&P/ASX 300, notionally containing the 20, 50, 100, 200 and 300 largest companies listed on the exchange, subject to some qualifications.
Sharemarket games
ASX sharemarket games give members of the public and secondary school students the chance to learn about investing in the sharemarket using real market prices. Participants receive a hypothetical $50,000 to buy and sell shares in 150 companies and track the progress of their investments over the duration of the game.
Merger talks with SGX
ASX was (25 October 2010) in merger talks with
Singapore Exchange (SGX). The merger would have created a bourse with a market value of US$14 billion. The merger was blocked by
Treasurer of Australia Wayne Swan on 8 April 2011, on advice from the
Foreign Investment Review Board that the proposed merger was not in the best interests of Australia.
Company performance (financial year)
2015 – Information Services and Technical Services revenues grew by 8% and 10% respectively, while Austraclear chipped in with 9%. Another bright spot was the dividend from IRESS, which rose 47% from the prior period, to $4.9m. This financial software company has risen by 27% over the past couple of years and ASX's 19.3% stake is now worth $334m, more than 4% of its own market value.
See also
*
List of stock exchanges
This is a list of major stock exchanges. Those futures exchanges that also offer trading in securities besides trading in futures contracts are listed both here and in the list of futures exchanges.
There are sixteen stock exchanges in the world ...
*
List of futures exchanges
*
List of Australian exchange-traded funds
*
All Ordinaries
*
Odd lotter
An odd lotter is an investor who purchases shares or other securities in small or unusual quantities. Stocks are typically traded in increments of 100 shares, a quantity known as a ''round lot'' or ''board lot''. The cost of 100 shares of a secur ...
*
List of companies of Australia
References
External links
*
ASX Annual Report 2012
*
{{World Federation of Exchanges
Futures exchanges
Companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange
Stock exchanges in Australia
Financial services companies based in Sydney
Economy of New South Wales
Financial services companies established in 1987
Australian companies established in 1987