Halliburton Company (HAL), Continental Resources, Inc. (CLR): The American Oil Renaissance Begins

One exchange to rule them all
One-half of the merger had been in operation since 1602, when it was created to facilitate trading in the world’s first public company. The other was the symbolic heart of the modern global securities industry. It was only fitting that the world’s first stock exchange and the world’s largest would merge, as the NYSE Group and Euronext did on April 4, 2007.

NYSE Euronext (NYSE:NYX) was then, and remains today, by far the largest and most liquid of the major global exchanges. In 2007, the new company boasted “a combined $28.5 trillion/21.5 trillion euro total market capitalization of listed companies and average daily trading value of approximately $118.8 billion/89.9 billion euros,” according to NYSE Euronext. Five years later, that was still true: The total market capitalization of NYSE Euronext-listed companies was roughly $19.5 trillion (keep in mind that the merger was completed at the peak of a global equities bubble), equal to a third of the total global market capitalization of companies listed on all exchanges tracked by the World Federation of Exchanges.

The article The American Oil Renaissance Begins originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Alex Planes.

Fool contributor Alex Planes holds no financial position in any company mentioned here. Add him on Google+ or follow him on Twitter @TMFBiggles for more insight into markets, history, and technology. The Motley Fool recommends Chevron, Halliburton, and NYSE Euronext.

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