The Share Trader
Share trading refers to the act of buying and selling shares in various companies. The aim is to buy shares when they are available for low prices and sell them when they go up in value, so you can make a profit on them. Share trading is commonly done online nowadays.
FTSE 100
The FTSE 100 is also commonly referred to as the FTSE 100 Index. It is usually spoken as the Footsie, to make it easier to say. The index has been in operation since 1984, and the letters stand for the Financial Times Stock Exchange.
The reason it is called the FTSE 100 is because it refers to the one hundred companies that come top of the London Stock Exchange (one of the two partners that originally formed the FTSE 100). Many people look to the performance of the FTSE to see how well (or badly) shares are doing overall.
NASDAQ
Most people have heard of the NASDAQ, but few know what the letters stand for. The answer is the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. However today, this stock market, operating in the USA, is known simply as the NASDAQ. This exchange was originally begun back in 1971.
The exchange is an electronic one, meaning that securities and stocks are traded by an automated system rather than by people. The stocks that are traded on the NASDAQ system are those that are represented by four letters. A good example of this is Microsoft, which is represented by the letters MSFT.