How Did That Happen?

This week I look at the stock market. Have you ever asked yourself how did stock markets happen? Come along for the ride! Before I get into the history of the stock market, it would be beneficial to explain what it is exactly or at least what a stock is. A stock consists of the shares into which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. It's pretty much simple. I'm not gonna go any deeper than that. In the 1100's. France created the Corted Challenge, which was a group of men who handled agricultural debts on behalf of the banks. So they were the first iteration of an institution that dealt in the division of profits in the 13 hundreds and in Venice, Italy, there is an influx of merchants looking to trade in government securities. These people would write their deals on slate and would therefore be solidified. This practice began to spread throughout Europe, and one place in particular was bridge, which is in Belgium. The Vander Burs family, uh, ran the, the TUR burst in, which was actually a series of different buildings that foreign merchants would stay in while they were doing their trading. And since there was no designated place for the trades to happen, they often occurred at the Inn. It is believed that this is where the term borse for stock market comes from. The first French stock market was called the borse and the Italian stock market is also called the morse. It was called BSA Italiano. This leads to the first stock exchange being created in Antwerp Belgium in 1531. It should be noted that around this time the Royal Exchange of London was starting. It was modeled after Antwerp and opened by Queen Elizabeth the first in 1571 at the Stock exchange in Belgium, there were different houses for different countries, but there was no actual trading of currency. The trading was done in bonds and promissory notes. Another iteration of an early stock market emerged in the 16 hundreds. When ships began sailing east to get goods and spices, the ships had to be paid for and supplied so the ship's owners would seek investors to back the voyage. They were heading on basically investing in the ship entitled the investor to a portion of the profits the ship would then make when it returned. This began on a larger scale when the Dutch East India company became the first publicly traded company in 1602. It's hard to parse out exactly who was first because a lot of sources do say that the British East India company was created in 1600 and the Dutch East India company was made in 1602, which would make Britain's the first. But in the same articles where this is said, they continue to claim that the Dutch was the first, and I believe that this is because they were more successful early on. That's why they say that they were the first. They took the game to a larger scale by allowing people to invest in the company as a whole, as opposed to individual ships. The creation of this company also allowed investors to possibly receive dividends. Instead of just their money from single voyages, the investors would receive their stock. On paper. The return on these investments was usually good, but the Dutch East India company did not always pay in money. The investors would sometimes have to settle for whatever produce or spices came back from the ships. People did not like this, and the other trading companies took notice and decided to only pay in cash. Over the next 200 years, the Dutch East India company would grow to become what some had called the first military industrial complex. This is because their trading had grown so large that it required them to have armies and broker deals with Asian rulers. This had gone past the initial idea of trading for spices. The symbol of the Dutch East India Company At the turn of the 19th century, things have started to sour for the Dutch East India company. This was due to a number of wars as well as having their company nationalized in 1...