Stock Exchange, Intercontinentalexchange | featured news

...Today, as individual investors buy and sell common stocks less and less, the transaction symbolizes the rapidly advancing utilization of vehicles that are too esoteric for the general public to comprehend– futures contracts and options on the direction of interest rates, or oil and natural gas prices, or metals and agricultural products like wheat and corn, or precious metals like gold and silver, and especially credit instruments like mortgages and bank loans.

Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange said they will take their bid for NYSE Euronext directly to shareholders after being rebuffed twice by the exchange.