As I mentioned in my November 28, 2025 Weekly Update, I recently came across a stock I assumed was listed on Canada’s largest and most senior stock market, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE), only to discover it was actually trading on its junior counterpart, the TSX Venture Exchange. That small mix-up sent me down a rabbit hole into how Canada’s exchanges are structured and how they came to be.
What started as a quick clarification turned into a surprisingly interesting history lesson. From there, it felt natural to zoom out even further and look south of the border, where the two primary US exchanges – the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq Stock Market (Nasdaq) – took very different paths to become global financial heavyweights.
Rather than leaving these stories scattered across separate Weekly Updates, I wanted to pull them together into one place. What follows is a walk through North America’s major stock exchanges – how they evolved, how they differ, and how, in Canada, they form a ladder that supports companies at every stage of growth, while in the US the NYSE and Nasdaq evolved along parallel paths.
The TSX: From Trading Club to Major Market
The TSX’s story begins in 1852, when a group of Toronto brokers formed an informal trading club. By 1861, they had incorporated as the Toronto Stock Exchange, making it one of the oldest exchanges in the world. In 2001, it became part of the TMX Group and adopted the shorter “TSX” branding we know today.
Despite its long history, the TSX has consistently adapted to change. It fully transitioned to electronic trading in 1997 – well ahead of many major global exchanges. Until the mid-1990s, it even quoted prices in fractions like eighths and sixteenths, a leftover from its early British influences. Today, trading is entirely electronic, and the TSX processes an average of about 1.16 million transactions per day, reflecting steady participation from banks, pension funds, asset managers, and retail investors. The exchange still reflects Canada’s economic backbone: banking, energy, mining, and industrials.
The TSX is home to Canada’s most established public companies – the big banks like Royal Bank (TSX: RY) and TD (TSX: TD), infrastructure and energy giants like TC Energy (TSX: TRP), railways like CN Rail (TSX: CNR), and a growing group of technology and clean-energy firms such as Shopify (TSX: SHOP), Celestica (TSX: CLS), and Brookfield Renewable Partners (TSX: BEP.UN).
Thanks largely to Canada’s dominant financial and resource sectors, the TSX consistently ranks among the world’s top stock exchanges by total market capitalization, giving Canadian companies an outsized presence in global markets compared to the country’s size.
Given that scale, what really sets the TSX apart, though, is that it doesn’t operate in isolation. It sits at the top of a two-tier system that includes a built-in proving ground for younger companies.
From Wild West to Launchpad: The Story of the TSX Venture Exchange
That proving ground is the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) – the junior market where many Canadian public companies take their first steps.
While the TSXV officially launched in 2001, its roots stretch back much further. For decades, the Vancouver Stock Exchange was the centre of Canada’s junior markets, especially for early-stage mining and exploration companies. During the boom-and-bust cycles of the 1970s through the 1990s, it earned a reputation for high-risk speculation. At its best, it helped launch future success stories. At its worst, it became known for volatility, weak oversight, and the occasional scandal – eventually earning the nickname “the Wild West.”
By the late 1990s, Canada’s capital markets were fragmented across multiple regional exchanges. As electronic trading became the norm and global competition intensified, that patchwork system no longer made sense. The solution was a national restructuring: Toronto would focus on senior equities, the Montreal Exchange on derivatives, and the Vancouver and Alberta exchanges would merge to form a single, modern home for early-stage companies.
That new exchange debuted in 2001 as the TSX Venture Exchange. Today, the TSXV processes roughly 37,000 transactions per day, giving early-stage companies a liquid, regulated platform to raise capital while still reflecting its smaller, more speculative nature compared with the main TSX.
The TSXV kept the entrepreneurial spirit of its predecessors but paired it with stronger governance, clearer listing requirements, and national oversight under the TMX Group. Its role was simple but powerful: give small-cap and micro-cap companies access to public capital, while offering a clear pathway to “graduate” to the main TSX once they proved themselves.
In fact, Canada is home to more publicly listed mining companies than any other country in the world, a distinction largely driven by the TSX Venture Exchange’s role as a global hub for early-stage exploration firms.
This relationship created a natural growth ladder. Many of Canada’s most successful public companies started on the Venture exchange, built scale and credibility, and eventually moved up to the big board, the TSE. Others choose to remain on the TSXV if growth is slower or the costs of a senior listing don’t make sense.
Today, the TSXV is still one of the most active junior markets in the world. Companies like Kraken Robotics (TSXV: PNG), which topped the 2025 Venture 50 list, highlight the type of early-stage firms that often have their sights set on that next rung. For investors, the TSX–TSXV ecosystem offers both ends of the spectrum: speculative early-stage opportunities and mature, stable businesses – all within a single national framework.
Where a company chooses to list isn’t just about size. Listing costs, regulatory requirements, investor base, peer comparisons, and even branding all play a role. That distinction becomes even clearer when you look at how the American markets evolved very differently from Canada’s ladder-style system.
The Engines of US Markets: the NYSE and Nasdaq
South of the border, the US developed its own two-exchange dynamic – not as a formal ladder like Canada’s, but as two very different philosophies of how markets should work. Together, the NYSE and Nasdaq now form the backbone of American equity markets.
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
The NYSE traces its origins back to 1792, when 24 brokers gathered under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street and agreed to standardize securities trading. That agreement evolved into the New York Stock & Exchange Board, and by 1863 it became the New York Stock Exchange.
In 1903, the NYSE opened its iconic building at 11 Wall Street, complete with towering columns and a trading floor that would become synonymous with global finance. For most of its history, trading there was loud, chaotic, and intensely human – traders shouting orders, waving papers, and using hand signals in a room that often rivaled a jackhammer in volume. Today, the NYSE handles tens of millions of trades per day, reflecting the massive scale and liquidity of a market built for some of the world’s largest companies.
The NYSE built its reputation around large, established companies with long operating histories. That focus on scale, stability, and global reach cemented its status as the world’s most recognizable stock exchange – a place where blue-chip giants like Visa (NYSE: V) and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) list alongside international firms seeking access to U.S. investors, such as the Italian car maker Ferrari (NYSE: RACE), all ringing the opening bell.
Nasdaq
Nasdaq took a completely different path. While the NYSE is home to many of the world’s largest companies by market value, Nasdaq typically lists more companies overall and often handles higher daily trading volumes, reflecting its long-standing focus on growth-oriented and high-turnover stocks. Today, the exchange processes around 1.8 billion trades per day, highlighting the scale and speed needed to support thousands of listed companies.
Launched in 1971 as the world’s first fully electronic stock market, it replaced the trading floor with computers from day one. Its original name – the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations – made its mission clear. Over time, it was simply shortened to “Nasdaq.”
Unlike the NYSE, Nasdaq has never had a physical trading floor. The famous Nasdaq Tower in Times Square is symbolic, but the real action happens in high-speed data centres that quietly match millions of orders every day.
From the beginning, Nasdaq became the natural home for technology and high-growth companies – long before technology dominated the market. Apple (NASD: AAPL), Microsoft (NASD: MSFT), Nvidia (NASD: NVDA), and countless others got their start here, shaping Nasdaq’s reputation as the launchpad for innovation. That growth-focused DNA remains central today, supported by infrastructure designed for speed, scale, and massive trading volume.
For clarity, “Nasdaq” can refer to a few different things. The Nasdaq Stock Market is the exchange itself – the electronic venue where thousands of companies are listed and traded. The Nasdaq Composite is an index that tracks the performance of all stocks listed on that exchange, giving a broad view of how Nasdaq-listed companies are performing overall. The Nasdaq-100, by contrast, includes only the 100 largest non-financial companies on the exchange and is often used in Electronically Traded Funds (ETFs) and market tracking. Being precise with these terms makes it easier to follow news and market updates, and prevents confusion between the exchange and the indexes that measure it.
Bringing It All Together
When you step back, the full picture comes into focus. Across the TSXV, TSX, NYSE, and Nasdaq, North America has built a spectrum of markets that support everything from tiny explorers to trillion-dollar giants. Some exchanges emphasize stability and tradition, others speed and innovation – but together, they form the backbone of the investing world we follow every week.
Whether a company is raising its first dollars on the Venture exchange or ringing the bell on Wall Street, these markets provide the pathways that turn small ideas into global businesses – and give investors the chance to become owners along the way.
Most investors interact with these exchanges indirectly through major indexes and ETFs. The TSX Composite reflects the health of Canada’s largest companies, while US benchmarks like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 pull from listings across both the NYSE and Nasdaq. The Nasdaq-100, in contrast, includes only stocks traded on the Nasdaq, translating exchange history into the performance we track week to week.
Understanding where a company trades – and why – adds useful context around its size, risk profile, and growth ambitions, which matters far more than the ticker symbol alone.