A clearing house is an intermediary between buyers and sellers of financial instruments. Further, it is an agency or separate corporation of a futures exchange responsible for settling trading accounts, clearing trades, collecting and maintaining margin monies, regulating delivery, and reporting trading data.
All the world's 10 most valuable companies, including Alphabet, Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT), are based in the U.S., according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ based on the S&P Global 1200 index. Alphabet's rise to No. 1 with a market value Tuesday of $554.8 billion is a historic moment.
1 Apple retains its status as the world's most valuable company ($725bn) increasing its market capitalisation by 54% (+$256bn) compared to last year. 2  The software giant is now almost twice as big as the second largest company (Google $375bn) and almost 10 times larger than the smallest in the Top 100.