when firms request listings they have to prove to an exchange that they meet the listing requirements the high visibility and liquidity that a listing supports is strong incentive for a company to meet listing requirements 
once a security is listed the issuing firm usually must maintain a set of related but less stringent trading requirements otherwise the company faces delisting while no legal penalty is involved being delisted can mean huge consequences for a company because its stock won t be traded on the exchange firms can cross list a security on more than one exchange and often do listing requirements are not barriers to trading altogether as firms are always free to trade securities over the counter however otc trading does not provide anywhere near the liquidity regulatory oversight prestige or visibility as trading on one of the major stock exchanges provides nasdaq s u s exchange had 3 767 companies listed as of january 2022 canada s tmx exchange and the new york stock exchange followed with 3 546 companies and 2 529 companies respectively 1listing requirements in practicelisting requirements vary by exchange but there are certain metrics which are almost always included the two most important categories of requirements deal with the size of the firm as defined by annual income or market capitalization and the liquidity of the shares a certain number of shares must already have been issued for example the nyse requires firms to already have 1 1 million publicly traded shares outstanding with a collective market value of at least 40 million 100 million for worldwide trading 2the nasdaq requires firms to already have 1 25 million publicly traded shares with a collective market value of 45 million both the nyse and the nasdaq require a minimum security listing price of 4 per share 3usually an initial listing fee as well as yearly listing fees are required the annual fees can scale up depending on the number of shares being traded and can total hundreds of thousands of dollars nasdaq fees are considerably lower than those of the nyse this lower cost has made the nasdaq a more popular choice of exchange for newer or smaller firms can a company be delisted yes if companies fail to pay annual fees or they can no longer meet the financial and liquidity requirements of an exchange they can be delisted also if share prices drop below a certain minimum a company can be delisted once delisted from a particular exchange investors won t be able to trade a company s stock on that exchange 