📈 The History of the Markets! 📉

I was doing some research into the history of the markets and I came across this very interesting graph up above. I thought I’d share it with you in case you found it interesting as well. I’ve been very interested in learning about how the markets came to be, who started them and for what purposes they were created for. Obviously there are two stories that will be told, the story everyone is taught and the real story. I want to find out what the real one is. I’ve seen what the markets have eventually become and so my interest is to learn how it got here.

I will begin my journey with a book that came highly recommended in a podcast I once listen to. It’s called “Devil Take The Hindmost” and here is an excerpt from the preface:

When I was young, people called me a gambler. As the scale of my operations increased I became known as a speculator. Now I am called a banker. But I have been doing the same thing all the time. Sir Ernest C a s s e 1 1, banker to Edward VII

Never before has the subject of speculation attracted as much attention as it does today. Behind much of the contemporary financial and economic news—foreign currency crises, stock market bubbles and crashes, derivatives fiascos, and technological innovations—lurks the speculator. In the United States, millions of individual investors trade stocks daily. The success of the American economy in the 1990s has largely been the product of speculative funds flowing into the stock market. This has enabled new companies to be floated and old ones to be merged and encouraged corporations to invest and investors to spend some of their stock market gains. A great bubble of prosperity has been blown before our eyes and its stability is naturally a cause for anxious concern.

Speculation is a divisive topic. Many politicians—several of them in Asia—warn that the global economy is being held hostage by speculators. In their opinion, the speculator is a parasitical figure, driven by greed and fear, who creates and thrives on financial crises.

As you can see it starts out very intriguing. I am very excited to start learning and of course I will be sharing anything I learn that I feel would be of interest to you.

Kevin Araujo