The major Italian stocks on the stock market

Buying and selling the major Italian shares listed on the Milan Stock Exchange:

If you are looking to track Italian stock exchanges, you should know their main listing place which is none other than the Milan Stock Exchange, better known as Borsa Italiana which was created in 1997 through the reunification of the country's former stock exchanges such as the Rome Stock Exchange. This financial centre is linked to the Italian benchmark index FTSE MIB. The purpose of this stock exchange is to report on the economic health of Italy, which is the sixth largest economy in the world despite the recent years of crisis, which have weighed heavily on its public debt.  However, the origin of this stock exchange can be estimated in 1808 thanks to the creation of the Milan Chamber of Commerce, which will become public in 1865. At that time, the Milan Stock Exchange was controlled by the Italian State and remained the only regulated market in the country until 1977. It was in 1977 that this stock exchange was finally privatized and Borsa Italiana S.p.A., in charge of managing it, was created.

It is important to note here that Borsa Italiana was recently acquired by the London Stock Exchange in 2007 and has therefore lost its independence. This change is largely due to the increasing globalization of markets and the consolidation of other stock exchanges.

Nowadays, however, the Milan Stock Exchange retains its headquarters at the Mezzanotte Palace in Milan. Its benchmark, formerly the S&P / MIB, has now become the FTSE MIB since the London Stock Exchange bought this financial centre. We will come back to this index and the Italian stocks that make it up below.

However, the Milan Stock Exchange can be divided into different listing markets that will make it easier for you to find the Italian stocks that interest you according to different criteria. This breakdown is made into seven different markets, first of all the MTA or Mercato telematico Azionario market, which is the basic market of this exchange and which is itself broken down into different markets. Next comes the MIV market for Mercato Telematico degli Investment Vehicles, which concerns investment funds, the AIM market specialised in SMEs, the IDEM market with derivatives, the SEDEX market with certificates, the MOT market for bonds and the ETF Plus market for ETFs.

All the shares that you will be able to buy or sell online through CFDs come from the Mercato Telematico Azionario market, which is the main market of this Italian exchange. It is on this market that you will find the major stocks in this country.

The major Italian shares are included in the FTSE MIB benchmark stock market index:

If the Milan Stock Exchange allows you to track all the shares of major Italian companies, this will not give you direct access to the major Italian shares. To do this, it is preferable to look at the country's benchmark stock market index, the FTSE MIB. The acronym MIB here represents the name Milano Italiana Borsa and the FTSE is the equivalent of the English Footsie.

This stock market index is composed of the largest stocks in the country according to the size of the total capitalization of each of the companies taken into account.

This index is also often correlated with other international stock market indices such as the American Dow Jones Index, the German DAX 30 Index, the French CAC 40 Index or the British FTSE 100 Index because of the increasing dependence of the various world stock markets in recent years. To learn more about the major Italian stocks that are part of this benchmark stock index, you can find above the list of the main stocks of the companies that compose it.

How to buy or sell Italian shares?

Investing in Italian stocks is possible today as there are several ways to invest or trade online.

It is of course possible to implement a yield or growth strategy by buying these stocks for cash. To do this, you will first need to have a stock market investment account such as a securities account. You can then place orders to buy and sell stocks directly from an online broker's platform. This method of investment may allow you to receive a dividend in return for holding these Italian stocks or to target a possible capital gain on the resale of these stocks.

The second method you can consider for investing in Italian stocks is to invest in a diversified investment vehicle. This can be an ETF, which is a product that replicates the composition of a stock market or sector index such as the FTSE MIB, or a FCP or mutual fund. The latter is in fact managed by a professional who composes it with different Italian or non-Italian stocks, in order to try to optimise the return.

Finally, you don't have to buy or sell Italian stocks to invest in them. It is also possible to trade them with CFDs. These contracts for difference are derivatives that allow you to speculate on both the rise and fall of the price of an asset such as an Italian share. The price difference between the price at the time the position is taken and the price at the time it is closed represents the gain or loss.

Before choosing one of these investment methods, you should be able to define certain criteria such as your investment horizon, your profile, your level of risk aversion and your investment objective in order to find the method that best suits you.