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The global trade war intensifies -

Donald Trump's tariff decisions have spooked investors and seen the US stock market fall heavily after the president refused to rule out the possibility of a recession. Now, Trump's trade war has expanded to cover the world, with 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the US. The White House has insisted that "the president will look out for Wall Street and for Main Street." But his erratic flip-flopping on trade policy has left America's financial hub dazed and confused.

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Wall Street reacts -

The New York Stock Exchange is one of the world's largest marketplaces for securities and other exchange-traded investments. It's located on Wall Street, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

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Epicenter of the trading realm -

As the epicenter of the trading realm, Wall Street bears both economic and cultural significance. It's home to some of the biggest and most powerful financial institutions in the world. More than that, Wall Street is a term used to refer to the entire US investment and financial industry and US economic power.

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Early history -

Wall Street's history dates back to the mid-17th century. In 1652 during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, Dutch settlers on Manhattan Island, called New Amsterdam at the time, feared an attack by the British was imminent.

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A defensive wall -

To defend the settlement, they built a wooden wall. Constructed from planks and dirt, it was 2,340 feet (713 m) long and nine feet (2.5 m) tall and spanned between two gates, one located at what is now the corner of Wall Street and Pearl Street, and the other on Wall Street and Broadway. The Dutch called it "de Waal Straat."

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Use and eventual demolition -

The wall stood for nearly half a century, after which it fell into disrepair. In 1693 it was restored to deter a possible French invasion. It was finally demolished in 1699.

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The Wall Street slave market -

In late 1711, Wall Street was made the site of a government-sanctioned slave market. It stood on one of the original wall gates on Pearl Street and was in operation until 1762.

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Capital gains -

Following independence from Great Britain, New York City was the national capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. City Hall was renamed Federal Hall and, as the nation's first capitol building, George Washington took the oath of office there in April 1789. Federal Hall was demolished in 1812. The building and Trinity Church, still a prominent Wall Street landmark, are depicted in this image.

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The Buttonwood traders -

In 1791, speculators had begun to meet under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street to trade securities. The following year they formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement, which was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange. Incidentally, a buttonwood tree is more often known today as an American sycamore.

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A busy mercantile hub -

By the late 18th century, Lower Manhattan had become a hub of mercantile activity. The Tontine Coffee House (seen on the left, flying the flag), housed the offices of the first buttonwood traders. Ten years later, the board moved into the Merchants' Exchange building at 55 Wall Street, shown on the right.

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Founding of the New York Stock Exchange -

The New York Stock Exchange was founded on May 17, 1792. Originally called the New York Stock and Exchange Board, the financial institution employed a strict dress code, with members suited in top hats and dress coats.

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The 1835 Great Fire of New York -

Disaster struck Lower Manhattan in December 1835 when a huge fire swept through the district. Over 700 buildings were destroyed in the inferno, including numerous properties on Wall Street: the Tontine Coffee House and Merchants' Exchange building were among the landmarks lost.

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Samuel Morse and the telegraph -

Cutting edge technology has always driven Wall Street. In 1837, Samuel Morse had demonstrated his revolutionary telegraph system. Brokers embraced his invention and it was seized on by Wall Street traders.

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Edward Calahan and the stock ticker -

Thirty years later, the first stock ticker was invented by Edward Calahan. The machine featured wheels of narrow paper strips detailing transactions. The stock ticker revolutionized financial markets, as it relayed information from trading floors continuously and simultaneously across geographical distances.

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Wall Street sees the light -

In another technological first, in 1882 Thomas Edison launched the first electricity plant in the world on Pearl Street. The facility provided power to 7,200 lamps on Wall Street.

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Dow Jones Industrial Average -

Charles Dow and Edward Jones are two names forever associated with Wall Street. In 1884, Charles Dow began tracking stocks. After he met statistician and journalist Edward Jones, the pair, together with Charles Bergstresser, founded the publishing firm Dow Jones & Company. But it's for the Dow Jones Industrial Average that the two men are especially known.

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The Wall Street Journal -

The Dow-Jones Industrial Average, an index that charted stock performance, was the most popular feature in The Wall Street Journal. Published by Dow Jones & Company, the newspaper debuted on July 8, 1889.

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The new NYSE -

In 1903, the inauguration of the new New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) impressed everyone with its size and majesty. It solidified the city's prominence as one of the great financial centers of the world, and cemented Wall Street as a symbol of capitalism and Lower Manhattan as a place to conduct business.

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New York City capitalizes on its reputation -

In fact, by 1918 and the end of the First World War, it was generally considered that New York City had eclipsed London (pictured) as a global financial center. But the writing was already on the wall.

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The Wall Street bombing -

On September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded across from the J. P. Morgan building in the heart of Wall Street. Thirty people were killed and hundreds injured. Many horses also died and several buildings were destroyed.

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An atrocity never solved -

The Bureau of Investigation (the predecessor of the FBI) believed the target to be the J.P. Morgan bank and eventually pointed the finger at an Italian anarchist cell. However, no one was ever charged with the attack, and the case was never solved.

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Boom and bust -

Throughout the "roaring" 1920s, a long boom took stock prices to peaks never before seen. From 1920 to 1929, stocks more than quadrupled in value and investors and speculators borrowed heavily to pile more money in the market. Then suddenly the bubble burst.

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Panic! -

On October 24, 1929, the epic boom ended in a cataclysmic bust. By October 28, known as "Black Tuesday," a panic ensued with 16 million shares traded away. Wall Street was in free fall.

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The Wall Street Crash -

By mid-November, the Dow had lost almost half of its value. Thousands of depositors converged on New York's Financial District, lining up in front of banks in the desperate hope of withdrawing their savings. But Wall Street had crashed.

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Worthless stock -

Investors went bankrupt overnight. Here, a speculator tries to sell his luxury roadster after losing all of his money in the stock market crash.

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The Great Depression -

The stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression, in which a quarter of working people were unemployed. Soup kitchens, mass foreclosures of homes and businesses, and falling prices became the new normal.

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Glass–Steagall legislation -

It took all of the 1930s for America to recover from the Great Depression. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Glass-Steagall bank reform, a move that forced commercial banks to refrain from investment banking activities to protect depositors from potential losses through stock speculation.

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Stagnation and decline -

During this period, development of New York's Financial District stagnated. Wall Street was on notice, the American public having lost faith in a banking system they believed was greedy and unregulated. 

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A new era -

The 1960s witnessed a growing national economy and prosperity, with Wall Street back on its feet. Besides regaining the trust of investors and the public in general, the NYSE acknowledged the shifting cultural landscape by admitting its first woman, Muriel Siebert, to head one of the NYSE's member firms. She joined the 1,365 male members of the exchange on December 28, 1967.

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NASDAQ launched -

In 1971, the NASDAQ was launched. The NASDAQ stock market began operations as the world's first electronic stock market. In 1998, it became the first stock market in the US to trade online, and attracted many companies during the dot-com bubble. Its main index is the Nasdaq Composite, a stock market index that includes almost all stocks listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

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Ringing in prosperity -

In 1985, Ronald Reagan made history as the first sitting president to ring the opening bell at the NYSE. The bell is rung to mark the start and end of trading. Over the years, the ritual has evolved into a celebration of economic growth and progress. Numerous celebrities and VIPs have been invited to ring the bell, among them Nelson Mandela and movie stars Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In December 2024, President-elect Donald Trump rang the opening bell after being recognized for the second time by Time magazine as its person of the year.

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"Black Monday" -

The specter of '29 rose its ugly head again when on October 19, 1987, Wall Street experienced one of the largest single-day crashes in 1987 with a US$500 billion loss as markets plummeted worldwide. The Dow Jones index alone plummeted over 200 points on a day described as "Black Monday."

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'Wall Street' (1987) -

Coincidentally, 1987 was the year Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street' was released. The movie follows unscrupulous and greedy corporate stockbroker Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), who trades on illegal inside information to get to the top. A sequel, 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,' was released in 2010.

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'The Wolf of Wall Street' (2013) -

In Martin Scorsese's 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' Leonardo DiCaprio stars as the real-life Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker who ended up in jail after being convicted of fraud and related crimes in connection with stock-market manipulation.

Sources: (TheStreet) (History.com) (NYSE) (ShareAmerica) (Investopedia) (Associated Press) (CNN) (Reuters) 

See also: How accurate are these true crime movies really?

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