Organized securities markets and stock exchanges are a product of economic development. In the early years of economic growth, most of a country’s industrial units are small and their capital requirements relatively modest. The rate of saving is low, and institutions for channelling private savings into investment are generally lacking. As the economy progresses and national income grows, new institutions enter the financial picture to direct the mounting volume of savings into productive outlets. The appearance of growing numbers of individual and institutional investors creates a need for trading markets to speed up transactions and enable stockholders swiftly and easily to convert their holdings to cash.

At this stage of development, corporations usually meet less of their financing needs through direct sales of securities in the new issue market and obtain a larger percentage through reinvesting their own earnings. This plowing back of earnings is not insensitive to the judgment of investors: if the prospects of a company are good, investors bid up the price of its shares in the trading market and show a willingness to forego dividends for the possibility of long-term capital gains achieved through internal growth. Thus, when a company is able to finance its expansion by means of reinvested earnings rather than by new stock issues, the trading segment becomes the more important aspect of the capital market.

Stock exchanges grew out of early trading activities in agricultural and other commodities. Traders in European fairs in the Middle Ages found it convenient to use credit, which required the supporting documents of drafts, notes, and bills of exchange. The French stock exchange may be traced as far back as the 12th century, when trading occurred in commercial bills of exchange. To regulate these incipient markets, Philip the Fair (1268–1314) created the profession of courratier de change, the forerunner of the modern French stockbroker, or agent de change. At about the same period in Bruges, then a prosperous centre of the Low Countries, merchants took to gathering in front of the house of the Van der Buerse family to engage in trading. From this custom, the name of the family became identified with trading, and eventually “bourse” came to signify a stock exchange. From similar roots in trade and commerce, the institutional beginnings of stock exchanges appeared during the 16th and 17th centuries in other great trading centres throughout the world—Amsterdam, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany.

The growth of trade created a need for banks and insurance companies. Political developments caused governments to seek new sources of funds. This combination of expanding activity and intermittent capital shortages stimulated the early issuers of securities—governments, banks, insurance companies, and some joint-stock enterprises, particularly the great trading companies. From the existing exchanges for commercial bills and notes, it was an easy and logical transition to the establishment of stock exchanges for securities. By the early 1600s, shares of the Dutch East India Company were being traded in Amsterdam; in 1773, London stock dealers who had previously been meeting in coffeehouses moved into their own building; and by the 19th century, trading in securities on a formal basis was common in the industrialized nations.

The evolution of stock exchanges continued. In Great Britain, progress has for the most part been internal and voluntary; the London Stock Exchange has regulated its own activities. The French stock exchanges, in contrast, are directly subject to law, and the operations of the agents de change have been affected by national decrees. At one time, there were three markets for securities in Paris: an official market called the Parquet (the “floor”); a semiofficial market, the Coulisse (the “wing”); and the Hors Côté (the “outside”), an unregulated market in unlisted securities. In 1929, the Hors Côté was subjected to official regulation and in the following decade its activities were absorbed into the Coulisse, which in turn was combined with the Parquet in a reorganization in 1961. In Belgium the exchanges have had a mixed history. Strict governmental controls were imposed in 1801 and not removed until 1867. Following the economic crisis of 1929–34, the pendulum swung the other way, and the exchanges were once more placed under the control of central authority. In Switzerland, the exchanges have been governed by cantonal (state) law.

Historical events have left their mark upon the development of stock exchanges in some countries. Mining, rather than trade and commerce, was the impelling influence in the establishment of stock exchanges in South Africa and Canada. In Germany, the Berlin Stock Exchange lost its dominant role after World War II, and its position was assumed by exchanges in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf. The Japanese securities markets were revolutionized following World War II, when a new securities law was enacted patterned after the U.S. model. A campaign to distribute stock formerly held by the large zaibatsu (family-owned combines) and semigovernment corporations greatly increased public stock ownership, which in turn contributed to the considerable growth of trading on the nine Japanese exchanges. Another post-World War II development was the interest of the governments of developing countries in the use of stock exchanges to facilitate external financing.

Securities markets in the United States began with speculative trading in issues of the new government. In 1791, the country’s first stock exchange was established in Philadelphia, then the leading city in domestic and foreign trade. An exchange in New York was set up in 1792, when 24 merchants and brokers decided to charge commissions while acting as agents for other persons and to give preference to each other in their negotiations. They did much of their trading under a tree at 68 Wall Street. Government securities formed the basis of the early trading. Stocks of banks and insurance companies added to the volume of transactions. The building of roads and canals brought more securities to the market. In 1817 the New York brokers decided to organize formally as the New York Stock and Exchange Board. Thereafter, the stock market grew with the industrialization of the country. In 1863, the New York Stock Exchange adopted its present name. During the Civil War additional exchanges were organized, one of them the forerunner of the present NYSE Amex Equities, one of the largest stock markets in the country.