NASDAQ Trends in 2015

NASDAQ is the biggest stock exchange in the United States based on market share and total volume traded, automatically making it arguably the most eminent in the entire world. Its stock exchange contains companies and corporations of the likes of Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.However, with size comes complexity. One must stay up-to-date on changes and trends within the NASDAQ exchange as circumstances change quickly. What may be true today may not be true tomorrow. This article will discuss a couple of trends to look out for in 2015 on the NASDAQ exchange.

Trading Private SharesAlthough it was first introduced in 2012– and was said to be enacted federally by 2013– the Jumpstart Our Business Startups ACT (JOBS) Act signed by President Obama promised to allow small, private companies a way to raise money through their own type of special IPO.The chief executive of NASDAQ, Robert Greifeld, mentioned last year his desire to use the JOBS Act– pending approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)– to open a new sub-exchange called the Nasdaq Private Market in order to exchange shares in private companies.

So, there are two trends going on. It will be easier for pre-IPO private shareholders to sell their shares in the future, and it will be easier for the public to buy these shares as there will be official markets from which to buy them. Just for context, private companies used to have to reveal profits and other financial metrics by the time they had 500 investors– now, with the JOBS Act, a company only has to do it once they have 2,000 or more stockholders.

Reclassification of Certain StocksNASDAQ has many different indices. So an omnipresent trend is the shuffling– and in some cases, the delisting– of certain stocks from a given index. For example, on the NASDAQ 100 index, American Airlines Group, Electronic Arts and Lam Research were added just prior to 2015. To accommodate these additions. Expedia, F5 Networks, and Maxim Integrated Products were removed. Add index changes to the certainties of death and taxes in life.

ETF TrendsETFs, or exchange traded funds, aren’t exactly stocks, but they’re traded on stock markets. They surpassed $2 trillionin assets in 2014 for the first time, and they are expected to continue to grow. “Smart” betas are something to particularly keep an eye one.

Jeff Ramson is the CEO of PCG Advisory Group and an authority within the Investor Relations industry.