Caracas Stock Exchange (CCS) .CR

The Caracas Stock Exchange is a securities exchange located in Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela. Though Venezuela is known as a socialist country, there still is some private ownership of property and business, unlike in more traditionally socialist countries like those that once existed in the Soviet bloc. The Caracas Stock exchange is the main venue in Venezuela for trading in shares of public companies. The Caracas Stock Exchange is known as la Bolsa de Valores de Caracas in Spanish.

The Caracas Stock Exchange implemented an automated trading system in 1992, and conducts the majority of securities transactions in Venezuela, but it is one of the smaller stock exchanges in Latin America. The primary gauge of the value of companies traded on the Caracas Stock Exchange is the Caracas Stock Index, which consists of 15 companies, and is also known as the General Index. The Caracas Stock Index is a capitalization-weighted index that tracks the value of the most liquid and densely traded companies in Venezuela, including Banco Nacional de Crédito, and Banco Provincial. 

The National Securities Commission is the Venezuelan regulatory body tasked with regulating the listing, sale, and trading of securities in Venezuela. The trading day for equities at the Caracas Stock Exchange is broken up into four parts: the pre-opening from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., the market session from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, the closing from 1:00 pm to 1:30 pm, and the post-closing, which runs from 1:30 pm to the next pre-opening. Fixed income securities are traded from 8:30 am to 1:00 pm. 

The Caracas Stock Exchange traces its roots back to 1805, when the country was still under the rule of the Spanish Empire. That year, Don Bruno Abasolo founded a trading house in Caracas that evolved into the exchange that is still in existence today. The institution known as the Caracas Stock Exchange was first registered in 1947, and consisted of 22 seats. 

The modern Venezuelan economy is largely dependent on the export of oil, as energy production accounts for more than half of the country’s entire gross domestic product. The oil sector is largely dominated by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A, the state-owned oil and natural gas company, which was founded in 1976 after the Venezuelan oil industry was nationalized. The company provides the government of Venezuela with the majority of its revenues, and the economic fortunes of most Venezuelans rise and fall based on the price of oil.