Trading on the stock exchange

Trading is the buying and selling of goods, services, or, as in these examples, shares, bonds, commodities or currencies. Shares change hands when they are traded. When a lot of shares change hands, share turnover is high. Trading is most often described as being moderate or active.

Heavy demand saw over four million of the new shares changing hands in the first hour of trading.

The Basle exchange, with a turnover only a seventh that of Zurich, may not survive in the longer

In advance on the Thanksgiving holiday, there was only moderate trading on Wall Street as the Dow Jones industrials moved lower.

Gold responded to fresh dollar weakness and worldwide share market nerves, rising $ 4.75 an ounce in activetrading.

Trading on the stock exchange and on other markets can also be:

a) dull, hesitant, lacklustre, light, negligible, quiet, slow, sluggish, thin or weak when activity

is low.

b) bumpy, choppy, hesitant, mixed or uncertainwhen the overall direction of prices is not

clear.

c) brisk, heavy, or hectic when there is a high volume of trading, in other words high turnover

of shares.

d) frantic, frenetic or frenzied when there is a very high volume of trading.

Lacklustre is spelt lackluster in American English.

Ex.2. Look closely at these extracts and deduce from which of the above four groups the missing words come. It isn't always possible to find the exact word: put a letter

(a, b, с or d) in each gap.

1) The FT index of 30 shares gained 3.6 to 1,947.3. Volume reached only 384.5 million shares in ___________ trading.

2) The City's attention, however, was diverted by the___________ trading in Racal's shares. In

all, 149 million shares changed hands during the day, almost 11 per cent of the entire company.

3 ) Shares in America's only super-bike maker collapsed by 30 per cent last week in two days

f___________ trading.

4 ) Fear, swiftly followed by euphoria, gripped the worlds markets last week as the Gulf erupted

into armed conflict. ____________ trading was seen across the globe as foreign-exchange

dealers, oil brokers, commodities traders and stockbrokers grappled with volatile markets and

_________________________ trading after weeks of ____________ business.

5) The FT-SE index finished another lacklustre day 17.1 points down at 2,523.4 in
____________ trading which saw less than 400 million shares change hands.

6) Paris, Dec 26 — This was one of the few European markets to open, and shares held early gains,

but trading was ____________ .

7) The price touched top as 14 million shares changed hands in ___________ trading . But

despite the high level of turnover, the price ended the session 1p lower at 16p.