You may have seen the words ‘stock market’ capitalized in some things you have read but not others. You may now be wondering which is the correct way to write it. This is what we want to help you with here. We want to definitively answer the question ‘is stock market capitalized’?
Is ‘Stock Market’ a Place?
A lot of grammatical rules in relation to capitalization will hinge on whether something is a place name or not. This can lead to a lot of confusion. After all, a stock market is a physical place, right? This means that we first need to establish whether ‘stock market’ is the official name of a place or not. We know that it is a physical place, but this isn’t enough. It absolutely must be the name of a place.
The answer is that there are no places that use the official name ‘stock market’. The official name of a stock market will likely always be ‘Stock Exchange’ e.g. NYSE is the New York Stock Exchange and LSE will be the London Stock Exchange. There is no such thing as ‘New York Stock Market’ or ‘London Stock Market’. The stock market is simply the thing that is being operated under these official names, whether in relation to a specific market or looking at stock markets as a whole throughout the world.
Is Stock Market Capitalized?
The phrase ‘stock market’ will never be capitalized in a sentence. So, for example, if you were talking about the ‘New York Stock Exchange’ but wanted to be a bit more informal, then you may say ‘New York stock market’. That is it. However, if you want to be a touch more professional in your writing, you would simply say the former anyway. Most of the time you would say ‘stock market’ is if it was in a sentence on its own. Obviously, it would never be capitalized there.
There may be small exceptions to this rule. However, these will not be grammatical exceptions, they will be purely stylistic. For example, if you are writing a title to an article, and you capitalize every other word in that title, then of course ‘stock market’ would be capitalized. However, if no other words are capitalized, then ‘stock market’ shouldn’t be. This is for the same reasons as before. It is not a ‘place name’.
