Brief History of Stock Market
A brief preview into the history of stock market provides with plenty of information. When people speak to the stock market it is not immediately clear as to what the person is referring to. To some it only means buying shares and trading through the computer. In fact the stock market is a structural place which has an address and this building can also be visited.
To many wall street and stock market are synonyms and this is far from being true. A brief take a quick look at the history of stock market reveals that the roots of the world’s biggest financial market began at Wall Street. It was from here that the new industry arose with it own terminology and language.
Wall Street acquired its name way back in 1673. A brief peek in the history of stock market tells you that originally Wall Street was set up not for commerce but for defense purpose. It was the Dutch settlers who built this 12 feet wall fence to protect themselves from the attacks of the British and Native Americans. They may have never imagined that this place would one day become the hub of the world’s financial activity. It was in 1685 that this 12 foot wall was brought down and replace by a new street which was called the Wall Street by the British.
A brief look into the history of stock market informs about how Wall Street rose to prominence. In the year 1790 in Philadelphia the first stock exchanged was founded in America. A couple of years later some merchants met here to discuss and take command of business securities. These merchants thus founded what is today known as the stock exchange of New York.
A shop was opened by this exchange on the Wall Street. The stock market which facilitates trades worth billion of dollars every day started off with brief and a humble beginning which is now history. Enormous profits were made at Wall Street in the 1900s but the boom period was ephemeral. In 1929 the stock market crashed miserably and ushered in the Great depression. The rich and the poor lost money alike.
Therefore, the government as well as the industry began to take measures to curtail the possibility of such massive crashes. Since the stock market is now a component of the worldwide economy necessary precautions has been taken to avoid any disastrous crash. However the possibility of a crash cannot be ruled out.
