The stock exchange shoulders the responsibility of ensuring price transparency, liquidity, price discovery, and fair dealings in such trading activities. As almost all major stock markets across the globe now operate electronically, the exchange maintains trading systems that efficiently manage the buy and sell orders from various market participants. They perform the price-matching function to facilitate trade execution at a price that is fair to both buyers and sellers.
A listed company may also offer new, additional shares through other offerings at a later stage, such as through rights issues or follow-on offerings. They may even buy back or delist their shares. The stock exchange facilitates such transactions.
The stock exchange often creates and maintains various market-level and sector-specific indicators, like the S&P (Standard & Poor’s) 500 index or the Nasdaq 100 index, which provide a measure to track the movement of the overall market. Other methods include the Stochastic Oscillator and the Stochastic Momentum Index.
The stock exchanges also maintain all company news, announcements, and financial reporting, which can usually be accessed on their official websites. A stock exchange also supports various other corporate-level, transaction-related activities. For instance, profitable companies may reward investors by paying dividends that usually come from part of the company’s earnings. The exchange maintains all such information and may support its processing to a certain extent.