A history of the Stock Market as I see it

I figure if I'm going to try to learn how to participate in the great adventure that is the market, it can't hurt to learn about it. As I said before, I'm not here to teach. I'm here to learn and I would be more than glad if others want to learn along with me and/or correct me if needed and give some input as well.

So, I give you a brief history of the market (as I see it while doing this research). In 1792, twenty four stock brokers signed a treaty called the Buttonwood Agreement that basically laid out the rules for buying and selling stocks and bonds. Twenty five years later, in 1817, the first constitution was drafted from the Buttonwood Agreement and the New York Stock & Exchange Board was born. In 1863 this name was shortened to the more familiar New York Stock Exchange, and five years after the seats on this prestigious board become a hot commodity. Fast forward 138 years later and the NYSE went both public and electronic, it merged with Archipelago Holdings, an electronic securities and formed the NYSE Group in 2006. The next year NYSE Group merged with Euronext N.V, a European electronic stock exchange based in Amsterdam and formed the NYSE Euronext in 2007.

There are a few other exchanges that you may or may not be interested that exist in this conglomerate. One such exchange is the NYSE Arca. This is a fully electronic stock exchange, connecting many different traders with the markets that they want to trade in. In order to ensure a smooth processing, the traders within this exchange must meet certain requirements in order to be allowed to continue trading.

The next exchange, the NYSE MKT is the market used primarily for small and micro cap companies. The requirements for this exchange is adjusted to the smaller companies it works with.

The other major exchange is ArcaEdge. This is a quick, efficient way to trade over-the-counter stocks. These are stocks that don't quite meet the requirements to make a listing on the formal exchanges. That said, these can be high risk stocks because of their nature. They tend to be penny stocks or possibly companies with bad credit records.

I think that's enough history for now. Thanks for reading

Until next time,
PDC