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Series ・ 10 parts

A History of the Stock Market: How Markets Move the World

In the Age of Exploration, the wealth beyond the sea promised enormous profit and the danger of sinking along with the ship. In 1602, the people of the Netherlands devised a way to share that danger among many hands. The Dutch East India Company, regarded as the world's first joint-stock company, and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Episode 1 traces the quiet revolution of investment and risk-sharing.

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  1. 01 The Invention of the Joint-Stock Company — The Wisdom of Sharing Risk In the Age of Exploration, the wealth beyond the sea promised enormous profit and the danger of sinking along with the ship. In 1602, the people of the Netherlands devised a way to share that danger among many hands. The Dutch East India Company, regarded as the world's first joint-stock company, and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Episode 1 traces the quiet revolution of investment and risk-sharing.
  2. 02 The First Bubble — Tulips and the South Sea The new device called the market invited in not only the hope of wealth, but also human frenzy. The tulip mania of 1637 in the Netherlands, the Mississippi scheme of 1720 in France, and the South Sea Bubble in England. The crowd psychology in which price calls forth price, and the abrupt collapse. Episode 2 traces the first age in which the very word 'bubble' was born.
  3. 03 The Birth of Wall Street In 1792, beneath a single tree in New York, twenty-four brokers struck an agreement that is regarded as the starting point of what would become the New York Stock Exchange. It was an age when railroad shares blanketed the nation and the market began to move the state itself. We trace the rise of American capitalism neutrally, through both its splendor and its shadow.
  4. 04 Black Thursday: The Great Crash of 1929 In the Roaring Twenties, America boomed with unprecedented prosperity, and everyone dreamed of riches through stocks. But in October 1929, the frenzy collapsed overnight and gave way to the Great Depression. We trace the truth of the great crash, and the birth of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that emerged from it, neutrally and grounded in the historical record.
  5. 05 Recovery and the Market of the Masses From the ashes, the market rises again. The Tokyo Stock Exchange reopened in 1949, investment trusts appeared, and rapid growth provided a tailwind. This is the era when stocks spread from the privilege of the wealthy few to 'something for everyone' — told on a factual basis, up to the securities recession of 1965 that frenzy invited.
  6. 06 Black Monday and Financial Deregulation On October 19, 1987, New York's stock prices collapsed by about 22 percent in a single day. Program trading accelerated the fall, and the shock circled the globe along electronic lines. How did markets, bound into one by financial deregulation, come to share their fragility as well? The single day of Black Monday, told on a factual basis.
  7. 07 Japan's Bubble — Frenzy and Collapse The asset bubble that swept over Japan in the 1980s. At the end of 1989, the Nikkei average reached a closing high of 38,915 yen, an all-time record. We trace, with neutrality, the euphoria of the land myth and soaring stocks, and the collapse that arrived with credit restrictions and the dawn of the 'lost era' — the price of an overheating that produced both winners and losers.
  8. 08 The Dot-Com Bubble and the Lehman Shock Around the year 2000, the dot-com bubble swelled on expectations for the internet — and then burst. And in 2008, the runaway of securitized products triggered the Lehman Shock and a global financial crisis. We depict, with neutrality, the trajectory by which the markets of the new century shook the world through two enormous collapses, viewed from both the hope placed in technology and the shadow side of financial engineering.
  9. 09 The Age of Algorithms After the global financial crisis, the very shape of the market began to change. Orders were placed by programs rather than people, and the contest came down to thousandths of a second. Around the same time, a plain kind of investing that merely tracked an index spread quietly, while online brokerages drew individuals back into the market. Episode 9 follows the market's new, unseen protagonists.
  10. 10 The Future of Stocks A scheme called NISA broadened the base of individual investing, and the plain ideas of accumulating and diversifying quietly took hold. A new asset called crypto appeared, and AI began to read the market. At the end of a 400-year journey, the final episode surveys where the relationship between humans and the market is headed, without rushing to an answer. Not as investment advice, but as history and culture.