The History of the Stock Market
Wall Street was originally an area of defense and not commerce. Somewhere around 1650, early settlers built a 12-foot stockade fence to defend against attacks by Native Americans and the British. They had no idea that this little fence would go on to become the center of financial activity of the world. The wall lasted up until 1685. At that point it was torn down and a new street was built. The British called it Wall Street.
In the early days of the country, Boston was the major shipping center and the national center of commerce, with commodities and bonds financing the growth of the young economy. In the late 1700s, Wall Street was the center point of commerce for New York City, but did not have a defined place indoors for transacting financial business. Merchants simply sold shares to their friends and associates out of warehouses or places of business. In 1792, where Battery Park now stands, 24 leaders of the financial community created the first stock exchange, called the Stock Exchange Office (SEO). The SEO became the New York Stock Exchange in 1863. There are other smaller stock exchanges in other cities such as Chicago, but the NYSE is the most widely known.
The second most widely known exchange also began in New York as the Curbstone Brokers. Because the NYSE had minimum limits set on the number of shares companies had to sell in order to qualify for auction, the Curbstone Brokers sold shares for companies that were too small to meet the 100-share minimum required by the larger exchange. The Curbstone Brokers met and auctioned shares for 100 years before taking their outdoor auction indoors. In 1953, this organization became the American Stock Exchange.
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