CH.FD · 0440 READ 05.06 · 11:00 PT DISPATCH · Nº 0440 · HISTORY TOLD WELL The early history of stock exchanges — from the piazza to the buttonwood tree Five hundred years of strangers meeting in a fixed place to trade claims on future cash flows: Italian piazzas, the Antwerp Bourse, Amsterdam in 1602, London coffeehouses, and a tree on Wall Street. The story of the stock exchange does not begin with a bell or a ticker. It begins in the open air of Italian piazzas in the 13th and 14th centuries, where merchants in Venice, Pisa, Verona, Genoa, and Florence traded…
