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An Historical Look at Stocks, Finance and Money
A little bit of the word lore and history behind money and the financial world.What has served as money? Aztecs used cocoa beans, Norwegians, once used butter and dried cod, many North American Indian tribes used animal skins and some of the early colonists used grains. It's worth thinking about this, the next time you check to see that your paycheck has been direct deposted. The word "salary" is derived from the word SALT. Salt was a key currency of the North Africans for hundreds of years. Beyond its value as a "spice," SALT was a key commodity substance used for preserving food. Going back to ancient Norway with its butter and dried cod banking system - can you imagine reconciling your monthly bank statement. Some messy bookkeeping there!
What's the bull about how the term bear markets came about? - There are a couple of theories as to how we came to describe and define a BEAR market. Do you remember reading about Davy Crocket fighting a bear... Remember how long a bear's claws are? They can be several inches in length and can rip through flesh like knives. Most hunting experts say that when a Bear makes a killing, its claws move from up to down. Well, when the market takes a sudden and then sustained downturn, it is like those claws moving through the stock market... A Bear Market. However, bear markets are also bone-chilling experiences. Such markets always fall much faster than they rise! They leave stock brokers feeling cold as if they were lost in the Arctic. Now, the word "arctic" is derived from "arktos" which just so happens to be the Greek word for "BEAR!" And that is the second guess on how the word BEAR came to describe a declining market - those cold trading days, when one wonders if the sun will ever rise again (and stocks go up...). Another question that often comes up when looking at the traditions of the financial world is why do they call it Wall Street anyway? This comes from the original settlers in New York (then called New Amsterdam) - the Dutch. They had just moved to Manhattan and had nowhere to build a dyke, so instead they built a wall. This was in 1653, and, of course, the wall was not meant to keep the sea out, but was made to keep out the British and Indians. This was an easy project for the Dutch, who built a 12 foot high wood stockade that ran from river to river (Hudson and Deleware Rivers). Then in 1685, as civilization was progressing, they laid out, an actual street - Wall Street, along the line of the stockade. Here is one more set of historical statistics to impress financial friends while you are sipping lattes after the bell rings... These days the average volume on the New York Stock Exchange is several hundred million shares. On many days, the volume has exceeded over one billion shares. How far we have come in volume of shares being traded daily? The last date on record when the New York Stock Exchange traded less than one million shares was October 10, 1953! The very first day that the BIG BOARD traded over one million shares was December 15, 1886. On Black Tuesday, the BIG CRASH on 10/29/29 the market established a Record Volume of 16 million shares! Wow! One Billion Shares a day... that's a lot of dried cod! About the author: Harald Anderson is the founder and Chief Analyst of eOptionsTrader.com. Publisher's Note: Visit the In The Trade Bookstore! for the latest in investment and financial resources.
News about Wall street History
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