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Brief History of the Stock Market
The stock market is a very ancient institution that seems to have had its origins in Rome, in the very renowned Collegium Mercatorium, summoned by the historian Tito Livio, as a place of financial speculation. This practice did not survive the political chaos that characterized the fall of the Roman Empire and it was necessary to wait until the commercial fairs of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, for the stock market to come to life once again. Amongst the diverse explanations of the origin of the work stock, the most probable remounts to the XIV century, in Belgium, in the city of Brussels where the merchants used to gather in the hotel of sir Van der Buerse and his Venetian relatives Della Bursa. This family used a shield of arms in which three bags of gold could be appreciated on. The name would then be extended to the assembly and would later on become adopted by other merchants of the bigger Belgium and foreign cities, such as Ambers, Amsterdam and Lyon, beginning from the XV century. In 1694 the stock exchange of the City in England was created, which played a fundamental role in the development of the financial markets. In 1724 France became endowed with a modern stock market, by real decree, which was located in Vivienne Street, in Paris. In 1808 the first stone was placed on the Brongniart palace, ordered by Napoleon I, where the current Stock exchange market in Paris functions now. The rest of the stock exchanges appeared starting from the XVIII century. The public stock exchange of Brussels was created in 1801. The stock exchange in North America, the New York Stock Exchange Board, located on the renowned street called Wall Street, of New York, was born in 1817. Wall Street is a street that goes from Roosevelt Drive, close to the East River, until the old church of La Trinidad. This street acquired this name due to a wall that was built along it with the objective of keeping the livestock and avoiding the entrance of the Indians, a little while after New York was founded as a Dutch commercial center in 1609.
This street rapidly turned into a center of commercial activity, given that it connected the docks that loaned service to commerce by the Hudson River in one extreme, and the import business on the East river, in the other. The first merchants had many businesses, they would buy and sell products in the agricultural sector, such as bear skin, molasses and tobacco, and they would commercialize foreign coins, insure merchandize and speculate with the dirt.
Stock Market History
In 1789 the first congress of the United States gathered in the Federal Hall located on Wall Street and authorized the first order of an emission of $80 million in government bonds, in order to absorb the cost of war. Two years later, shares of banks would be added to the government bonds when Alexander Hamilton, Treasury Secretary, founded the first bank of the nation called the First Bank of the United States and offered shares to the public. The business men of Wall Street soon started to program share auctions and bonds, just as was done for the agricultural products and finally, formed this organization The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The golden age of the stock exchange began at the ending of the XIX century and remained until the First World War. In 1914 the City, situated on the east side of London, turned into the financial center of the world, followed by the plaza of Paris. A strong inflation of the periods between the first war, the crisis of 1929 and then the Second World War brought about harsh blows to the European markets, which then allowed New York to occupy the first place, which it continues to maintain till this very day.