New York Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange traces its humble beginnings to a group of twenty-four brokers who gathered on Wall Street in the late eighteenth century. While legend often places their inaugural meeting under a specific buttonwood tree, these men actually conducted their business in various coffee houses and offices throughout the area. In May 1792, they signed the Buttonwood Agreement, a document that established standardized commission rates and pledged the brokers to trade only with one another. This compact effectively transformed an informal, chaotic system of street-level trading into a regulated market that would eventually become the centerpiece of global finance.