2.4 Functions and Significance of Stock Exchanges

The exchange (NEPSE — and the newly-approved second exchange's era): the listing venue (the issuer's admission gate — the listing agreement's disciplines), the trading platform (the order- matching rules, the trading hours, the circuit breakers), the self-regulatory face (the members' supervision, the listing's enforcement, the arbitration of the brokers' disputes — the SRO concept), the price publication (the official price as the economy's barometer), and the market'sumbrella (the clearing-settlement-and-depository integration). The significance: the exchangeas the market's institution — the repeated game's arena where trust is engineered into rules (the counterparty's anonymity made safe by the clearing house's guarantee).