The Stock Exchange
Once shares could be handed on, somewhere was needed to hand them on in. Amsterdam gave the VOC's shares a standing market where they changed hands day after day, and prices began to move on news, rumour and expectation. Joseph de la Vega, writing in 1688, described the trade there as «confusion of confusions» — and every device he catalogued, short selling, options, dealing in shares nobody owned, is still in the market today. The room where promises are priced was fully formed within a century of its opening.
The myth, corrected
Amsterdam opened the world's first stock exchange in 1602
Antwerp had a purpose-built exchange in 1531, seventy-one years earlier, with an inscription over the door dedicating it to the merchants of every nation and language. What Amsterdam had first was continuous secondary trading in the shares of a single joint-stock company.