On 30 August 2020, the NZX had a total of 184 listed securities with a combined market value of NZ$184.87 billion.

[needs update] [3] NZX began life as a number of regional stock exchanges during the gold rush of the 1860s.

[5] Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Thames and Wellington formed the Stock Association of New Zealand in 1915, joined by Taranaki in 1916, Invercargill in 1920 and Gisborne in 1922.

[8] On 16 October 2002 the member firms of the New Zealand Stock Exchange voted in favour of demutualisation, and on 31 December 2002, NZSE became a limited liability company.

[10] The New Zealand Exchange was subject to online distributed denial-of-service attacks that disrupted trading for five days commencing on 25 August 2020.

A group of "DDOS extortionists" demanded an unspecified ransom be paid in Bitcoin or they would continue the attacks.