Q.What is a stock exchange? Define it as per the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956.

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange is the oldest stock exchange in the world — option (c).

A stock exchange is an organised market where securities such as shares, debentures and bonds are bought and sold. The very first such organised exchange was founded in Amsterdam in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company.

• The Bombay Stock Exchange (1875) is the oldest in Asia, not the world.

• The London and National (NSE, 1992) exchanges came much later.

Shares and debentures are traded on the stock exchange market, so the correct option is (b).

A stock exchange is a specifically organised market where existing securities such as shares, debentures and bonds are purchased and sold in a systematic, regulated way. It is the place where investors trade previously issued securities.

The other options deal with goods, not securities: a local market and a manufactured-goods market trade in physical products, and a "family market" is not a securities market at all. Only the stock exchange deals in shares and debentures.

This is a basic one-mark question in the Tamil Nadu HSC Commerce Stock Exchange chapter.

A stock exchange is also called the security market; the answer is option (d).

A stock exchange is an organised secondary market that provides a place and mechanism for buying and selling already-issued securities — shares, debentures, bonds and government securities. Because it deals in securities, it is also known as the security market (or securities market).

It is not called the national market, spot market or local market in this context; the recognised alternative name is the security market.