Editing Stockbroker (section)

==History of stock broking==
{{Main|Stock exchange}}
{{Cquote|(...) This enigmatic business [i.e. the inner workings of the [[:nl:Beurs van Hendrick de Keyser|stock exchange in Amsterdam]], primarily the practice of [[Dutch East India Company|VOC]] and [[Dutch West India Company|WIC]] stock trading] which is at once the fairest and most deceitful in Europe, the noblest and the most infamous in the world, the finest and the most vulgar on earth. It is a quintessence of academic learning and a paragon of fraudulence; it is a touchstone for the intelligent and a tombstone for the audacious, a treasury of usefulness and a source of disaster, (...) The best and most agreeable aspect of the new business is that one can become rich without risk. Indeed, without endangering your capital, and with out having anything to do with correspondence, advances of money, warehouses, postage, cashiers, suspensions of payment, and other unforeseen incidents, you have the prospect of gaining wealth if, in the case of bad luck in your transactions, you will only change your name. Just as the [[Hebrews]], when they are seriously ill, change their names in order to obtain relief, so a changing of his name is sufficient for the speculator who finds himself in difficulties, to free himself from all impending dangers and tormenting disquietude.|200px||[[Joseph de la Vega]], in his book ''Confusión de confusiones'' (1688), the earliest book about [[stock trading]]<ref>[[Joseph de la Vega|De la Vega, Joseph]]: ''Confusión de confusiones (1688): Portions Descriptive of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange''. Selected and translated by Hermann Kellenbenz. ([[Cambridge, MA]]: Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, 1957)</ref>}}

The first recorded buying and selling of [[Share (finance)|shares]] occurred in [[Rome]] in the 2nd century BC.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=03KYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17|title=Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible|page=17|last=Goetzmann|first=William N.|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2017|isbn=9780691178370}}</ref> After the [[fall of the Western Roman Empire]], stockbroking did not become a profession until after the [[Renaissance]], when government [[Bond (finance)|bond]]s were traded in [[Italian city-states]] such as [[Genoa]] and [[Venice]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ot05CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24|title=Government Debts and Financial Markets in Europe|page=24|last=Piola Caselli|first=Fausto|publisher=Routledge|year=2015|isbn=9781317314233}}</ref> In 1602, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (now [[Euronext Amsterdam]]) became the first official [[stock market]] with trading in shares of the [[Dutch East India Company]], the first company to issue stock.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/first-company-issue-stock-dutch-east-india.asp | title=What Was the First Company to Issue Stock? | first=Andrew | last=Beattie | work=Investopedia | date=December 13, 2017|access-date=October 9, 2020}}</ref> In 1698, the [[London Stock Exchange]] opened at the [[Jonathan's Coffee-House]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ayTn49BJewAC&pg=PA277|title=Market Players: A Guide to the Institutions in Today's Financial Markets|last=Rolland|first=Gail|page=277|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=2010|isbn=9780470665558}}</ref> On May 17, 1792, the [[New York Stock Exchange]] opened under a [[platanus occidentalis]] (buttonwood tree) in [[New York City]], as 24 stockbrokers signed the [[Buttonwood Agreement]], agreeing to trade five securities under that buttonwood tree.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://guides.loc.gov/wall-street-history/exchanges | title=Wall Street and the Stock Exchanges: Historical Resources | publisher=[[Library of Congress]] | date=June 12, 2018|access-date=October 9, 2020}}</ref>