May 17
STOCK EXCHANGE DAY
On this day in 1792, twenty-four brokers sat down to fix rates for commissions on stocks and bonds. From that agreement came what has been known since as the New York Stock Exchange or Wall Street.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is located in the financial district, an area in lower Manhattan, on a street named after a defensive wall built around 1650. Wall Street became interchangeable with the Stock Exchange. The original brokers’ meeting place was quite different from today’s noisy, crowded, high-energy floor. In bad weather, they met at a coffee house and when the day was sunny, the brokers sat under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street to conduct their business.
There are now over 51 million individual investors and 10,000 institutional investors who are represented on the floor of the NYSE by 480 member-trader firms. The NYSE is respected throughout the world and attracts investors from many countries.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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