1653 |
Dutch colonists construct a wooden stockade across lower Manhattan to protect the north side of their settlement against attacks by the British and Indians. By the turn of the 18th century, the British have taken over the colony and dismantled the barrier, turning it into a paved lane called Wall Street. |
1776 |
September 21: A devastating fire, probably the work of colonial arsonists trying to disrupt the British occupation of the city during the American Revolution, destroys hundreds of structures in the vicinity of Wall Street. |
1790 |
January 14: In his landmark Report on the Public Credit, the young nation's first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, proposes a method for the U.S. to handle federal and state debt by issuing government bonds, and establishes the principle of free trade for securities in the marketplace.
August: Brokers meet in Philadelphia, where they buy and sell the first major issues of publicly-traded securities: $80 million in bonds issued by the federal government to pay off debt from the Revolutionary War. |
1792 |
May 17: At the Merchants' Coffee House at the corner of Wall and Water Streets, two dozen New York City stockbrokers and merchants sign the "Buttonwood Agreement," named after a buttonwood tree under which business has been transacted in the past. The agreement lists rules for securities transactions. |
1793 |
The locus for securities transactions in New York moves to the Tontine Coffee House, across the street from the Merchants' Coffee House. Business is also transacted on the street. |
1817 |
March 8: A group of New York brokers formally establish the New York Stock and Exchange Board, an organization that later will be renamed the New York Stock Exchange (N.Y.S.E.). |
1829 |
The stock market reaches a trading volume of 5,000 shares a day. |
1835 |
December 16: On a bitterly cold night, a fire starts in lower Manhattan. Raging for two days, it will destroy 700 buildings, including the Merchants' Exchange. |
1836 |
September 12: The N.Y.S.E. bars its members from conducting business in the streets. |
1837 |
March 22: The N.Y.S.E. starts paying its president a salary. The first paid president, David Clarkson, earns $2000 a year ($31,960 in 2003 dollars). |
1844 |
May 24: Samuel F. B. Morse transmits the first viable telegraph message. Securities brokers quickly adopt the technology to send market quotations. The telegraph helps expand the stock market by making trades accessible to brokers and investors outside of New York.
1861
May 11: In response to the outbreak of the Civil War, trading of Confederate securities is banned. |
1866 |
July 27: Cyrus Field completes a transatlantic cable, connecting telegraph operators across the Atlantic Ocean. For the first time, London and New York markets can communicate instantaneously. |
1867 |
November 15: Edward Callahan invents the stock ticker, a device that shows current market prices and represents each company on the stock market with symbols based on Morse code. |
1869 |
September 24: Black Friday. A group of speculators led by Jay Cooke and Jim Fiske try to corner the gold market, setting off a U.S. financial panic. |
1873 |
September 18: The brokerage firm of Jay Cooke & Company, a major investor in new railroad construction, collapses, sparking the Panic of 1873. |
1878 |
November 13: The N.Y.S.E. installs the first telephones on its trading floor. |
1882 |
November: Charles Dow and Edward Jones form Dow Jones & Company and design the first index to measure the activity of the N.Y.S.E. |
1884 |
May 6: The Wall Street brokerage firm of Grand and Ward fails, leading to a panic and the failure of 15 other stock exchange firms. Grant and Ward is co-owned by Buck Grant, the son of former Union general and president Ulysses S. Grant, and the failure plunges the ex-president into bankruptcy. Desperate for money, he will begin writing his wartime memoirs soon afterward. |
1886 |
December 15: The N.Y.S.E.'s trading volume reaches one million shares a day for the first time. |
1890 |
April 8: Junius S. Morgan, the head of the Morgan banking family, dies. His son, John Pierpont Morgan, will turn the family financial empire into one of the most powerful banking houses in the world. |
1896 |
May 26: Charles Dow reveals his industrial stock average in the first publication of his daily paper -- the Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones creates four averages to measure market performance, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average. |
1906 |
January 12: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes the day at over 100 for the first time. |
1907 |
October 21: Rumors of financial problems at a leading New York bank trigger investors to run on banks throughout the city, beginning the Panic of 1907. J. P. Morgan devises a plan to return cash to banks, saving the country from its most severe financial crisis to date. |
1913 |
February 28: The Pujo Committee, appointed by Congress to investigate practices of the banking and securities industry, issues a report which leads Congress to create the Federal Reserve System. The Fed is designed to stabilize the nation's banking structure. |
1914 |
July 31: World War I begins in Europe, leading to sharp declines in world stock prices. The N.Y.S.E. and exchanges throughout the world temporarily suspend trading in order to stop prices from dropping further. |
1917 |
April 7: Following a series of German provocations, President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress for a formal declaration of war. The U.S. enters World War I.
June 8: A liberty loan rally is held on the trading floor of the N.Y.S.E., where former president William H. Taft encourages Americans to purchase war bonds. |
1918 |
November 11: The United States emerges from World War I as a creditor nation and a rising global force. |
