BMA Gyaan- Interesting facts about Wall Street

Wall Street was laid out behind a 12-foot-high wood stockade across lower Manhattan in 1685. The stockade was built to protect the Dutch settlers from British and Native American attacks.

The “stock market” began in May 17th, 1792 when 24 stock brokers and merchants signed the Buttonwood Agreement.The buttonwood tree was simply the local name for the sycamore tree.

The first stock ticker was invented by Edward A. Calahan in 1867.
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 creates the Securities and Exchange Commission, charged with the responsibility of preventing fraud and to require companies provide full disclosure to investors.

Despite the New York Stock Exchange’s notoriety, it was not the first stock exchange in the United States. That distinction belongs to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, which was founded in 1790.

The Massachusetts Investors Trust was the first official mutual fund, created on March 21st, 1924.
The Wellington Fund, created in 1928, was the first mutual fund to include stocks and bonds.

Wells Fargo Bank established the first index fund in 1971. John Bogle would use it as the basis for building low cost index funds at The Vanguard Group.

The first exchange traded fund, or ETF, was SPDR. It was cretaed in 1993 by State Street Global Advisors and tracks the S&P 500 stock index.