Who Are The Major Participants In Financial Markets?

There are two financial market participants including Investors vs. Speculators and Institutional vs. Retail. Investor participates by making investments in the financial markets and without their finances financial markets may not expand. Speculators do not have intentions to have long term exposure in all the best assets but they carry securities for short periods of time. An institution includes bank, retirement fund, insurance company,  hedge fund, or mutual fund etc. The last participant is the Retail which is an individual investor who possesses shares of a given security. All these participants interact and enhance the activities of financial markets.