New York Stock Exchange

New York Stock Exchange. The largest of the country's organized securities exchanges.Tracing its origins to the 1792 Buttonwood Agreement among street brokers, the exchange developed from an outdoor market on Wall Street in lower Manhattan into the New York Stock and Exchange Board in 1817. The current name was adopted in 1863.

The exchange trades stocks that it lists, or registers. Trading takes place on the exchange at various official posts where markets are maintained by traders known as specialists. They buy and sell their assigned stocks from other floor brokers who represent themselves and the public. Specialists and other brokers purchase their seats on the exchange and are required to meet certain capital requirements in order to trade. From just a handful of stocks in its first decade, the exchange by the end of the twentieth century listed more than 2,900 different companies, both foreign and domestic. In terms of value represented, this made it the world's largest stock exchange.

After many smaller disasters, the exchange suffered its most serious decline in the stock market crash of 1929. As a result of congressional investigations that followed, the exchange was subjected to federal regulation by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. This act put all stock exchanges under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Two 1975 developments affecting the New York Stock Exchange were the consolidation of the ticker tape reporting transactions into a national integrated system with other exchanges and the abolition of fixed commission rates in favor of negotiated rates.
See also Banking and Finance; New York City; Stock Market.

Bibliography

Robert Sobel , The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Exchange, 1975.
Charles Geisst , Wall Street: A History, 1997.

Charles Geisst