© 2026 LearnInShort
A household saves; a firm needs to build a factory. The financial market is simply the plumbing that carries money from the first to the second — and the whole chapter turns on one question: for how long?
If the money is needed for less than a year, it is the money market. Short, safe, wholesale, and supervised by the Reserve Bank of India.
If the money is needed for more than a year, it is the capital market. Longer, riskier, open to ordinary investors, and regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
That single line — one year — decides the instrument, the regulator and the risk in almost every question set on this topic. A candidate who remembers it can place an unfamiliar instrument correctly without ever having read about it.
So before memorising lists, fix the line. Then the lists arrange themselves on either side of it.
1. Treasury Bills in India are currently issued in which three maturities?
2. SEBI was given statutory status by an Act of Parliament in the year
3. The Sensex is an index built on the shares of how many companies?
4. Which one of the following is a money market instrument?
5. The Nifty is the benchmark index of which stock exchange?
6. Compared with an equity shareholder, a preference shareholder normally
7. The oldest stock exchange in Asia is
8. A 'bear market' is one in which