The NYSE was formed in 1792 arising from the Buttonwood Agreement which entailed a number of brokers to trade assets for fees. As the NYSE grew extensively during the early part of the 1800s, the New York Stock & Exchange Board was created in 1817 with the intent of regulating stock exchange rules. In 1863, its name was altered to the New-York-Stock-Exchange.
The Wall Street Journey commenced posting the Dow-Jones-Industrial-Average in 1896 which had an initial value of 40.74. This index originally represented just 12 stocks but soon become a health barometer for the overall performance of the NYSE. The 1920s witnessed a surge in stock market activity epitomized by the Dow hitting a peak of 381.17 in 1929. However, the crash on 27th October 1929 caused the Dow to collapse to 145 by November. This index did not recover for 25 years until 1954 when it surpassed its pre-crash peak. The NYSE implemented ‘circuit breaker’ rules following further crashes in the 1980s. The Dow hit an all-time high of nearly 12,000 in 2000 before climbing over 14,000 in modern times.
The NYSE became a publicly quoted company in 2005 after amalgamating with Archipelago, an electronic stock exchange. The new company then provided both electronic and manual trading. Consequently, these moves helped the NYSE to remain competitive as one of the major stock exchanges on the planet. The NYSE presently conducts the largest daily number of trading transactions compared to any other stock exchange in the world. The stocks of nearly 3000 firms are traded on the NYSE ranging from small startups to major blue-chip corporations. However, a firm must comply with strict stipulations in order to be listed on the NYSE.
The NYSE possesses a Board of Directors consisting of between six to twelve members. Each director must be totally independent of all the trading activities occurring on the floor of this exchange. This requirement is to guarantee that the operations of the exchange do not influence its regulatory duties. The board is elected on an annual basis. One of its prime tasks is to pick a Board of Executives from the member companies of the NYSE.
