About: Financial network

A financial network is a concept describing any collection of financial entities (such as traders, firms, banks and financial exchanges) and the links between them, ideally through direct transactions or the ability to mediate a transaction. A common example of a financial network link is security holdings (e.g. stock of publicly traded companies), where a firm’s ownership of stock would represent a link between the stock and the firm. In network science terms, financial networks are composed of financial nodes, where nodes represent financial institutions or participants, and of edges, where edges represent formal or informal relationships between nodes (i.e. stock or bond ownership).