big board
Big Board is the old nickname for the New York Stock Exchange, the grand marketplace where some of the world's biggest companies have their shares traded.
In plain English
There is the roadside market in Balogun where a trader shouts out prices and haggles with you face to face, and then there is the Lagos Business School auditorium where a company's fate gets decided by grave men in suits reading a report nobody outside the room has seen. The Big Board sits somewhere between the two, except it is neither market nor secret room. It is the New York Stock Exchange, and people started calling it that decades ago because it was, quite literally, the biggest trading floor in the world, with a big physical board that once displayed prices for everyone to see.
These days the nickname has outlived the actual board. Trading happens mostly through screens and algorithms now, but the name stuck the way people still say they are going to 'flash' someone even though phones do a lot more than flash calls these days. When someone in finance says a company 'listed on the Big Board', they mean it joined the NYSE, which is a different thing entirely from listing on smaller exchanges or on the tech heavy Nasdaq.
For a Nigerian abroad sending money home, the Big Board might feel distant, but it is not. If your pension fund, your UK workplace pension, or a Nigerian mutual fund holds shares in companies like Coca Cola or Johnson and Johnson, you have a stake in what happens on that floor, whether you have ever set foot in New York or not.
Getting listed there is not something any company just walks into. The NYSE has strict requirements around company size, earnings history, and share price, so being on the Big Board is often read as a sign that a company has grown past its early, scrappy years into something more established.
A Nigerian investor using an app to buy shares in Apple through a domiciliary account is technically buying into a company listed on the Big Board, even while sitting in Lekki with a phone and a bit of patience.
Questions people ask
Is the Big Board the same as Wall Street?
Not quite. Wall Street is the street in New York and a general nickname for American finance, while the Big Board specifically means the New York Stock Exchange, one building and one exchange among many on and around that street.
Can a Nigerian buy shares listed on the Big Board?
Yes, through international brokers or apps that support foreign markets, or through a domiciliary account with a Nigerian bank that offers global investing services, though you should check fees and tax implications first.
Why do people still call it the Big Board when trading is digital now?
Old nicknames rarely retire just because the technology behind them changes. The name has become shorthand for the exchange's size and importance, much like people still say they are dialling a number.
Last reviewed