The History of NYSE

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The History of NYSE
The New York Stock Exchange is where icons and disruptors come to build on their success and shape the future. We’ve created the world’s largest and most trusted equities exchange, the leading ETF exchange, and the world’s most deterministic trading technology. Our data, technology, and expertise help today’s leaders and tomorrow’s visionaries capitalize on opportunities in the public markets.
About the NYSE
The NYSE Bell

The original Buttonwood Agreement was signed on May 17, 1792.
The New York Stock Exchange traces its origins to the Buttonwood Agreement signed by 24 stockbrokers on May 17, 1792, as a response to the first financial panic in the young nation. It set rules for how stocks could be traded and established set commissions. The Agreement aimed to promote public confidence in the markets and to ensure that deals were conducted between trusted parties.



Though the Buttonwood Agreement marks the official founding of the NYSE, the Exchange traces its roots back to the 1600s and the foundation of the U.S. Capital Markets. In 1624, the Dutch founded New Amsterdam on the southern end of Manhattan and built a stockade from which the street derives its name; running east from what is now Broadway downhill to the East River.
The Compromise of 1790 cemented Wall Street’s role as the nation’s financial capital. The agreement allowed Alexander Hamilton, the United States’ first Secretary of the Treasury, to implement his fiscal policy of paying Revolutionary War debt using federally issued bonds. Hamilton’s economic and financial vision included the federal assumption of the debt from the Revolutionary War, the creation of a central bank, and support for indigenous manufacturing. Together, these laid the framework for a strong economy that unleashed free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and credit that enabled markets and private institutions like the NYSE to flourish.
In the Exchange’s early years, stock trading continued on an informal basis in nearby coffeehouses where merchants typically gathered. By 1817, the stock market was active enough to encourage brokers to create a formal organization. A constitution was adopted on March 8, 1817, creating the New York Stock & Exchange Board, the forerunner of today’s NYSE. From the beginning, regulations governed trading. The constitution spelled out detailed rules for the transaction of business and imposed fines to keep disorderly brokers in check.
The new stock exchange rented a room at 40 Wall Street where the brokers gathered twice a day to trade a list of 30 stocks and bonds. From the podium, the president called out the name of each security in turn, while the brokers shouted bids and offers from the chairs assigned to them. This was the origin of the term “seat” which, ever since, has signified a membership on the NYSE.
The number and variety of securities traded at the NYSE steadily increased as America grew. States and municipalities issued bonds to finance the construction of turnpikes, canals, and bridges. Banks, insurance companies, and railroads issued stock to raise the necessary capital to develop and expand. By the end of the Civil War, more than 300 different stocks and bonds were traded at the NYSE. The Exchange moved into its first permanent home – on a portion of its present Broad Street site – in 1865.
Just a few years later, increasing trading volumes inspired the NYSE to switch from the old method of trading to a new system of simultaneous trading in all stocks in a continuous market. Stocks were assigned to specific locations – trading posts – and brokers abandoned their seats to roam about the large open trading floor to trade directly with one another in whatever stock they chose.
NYSE Trading Floor, 1881 with annunciator board pictured left.