Which U.S. stock exchange was founded in 1792 and later became central to the 1929 Wall Street Crash?

The New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1792 and later became central to the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

Twenty-four brokers and merchants signed the Buttonwood Agreement on May 17, 1792, establishing an organized trading arrangement in New York. The institution eventually became the New York Stock Exchange, commonly abbreviated NYSE. It developed into the world’s best-known venue for trading shares of large American companies.

During the late 1920s, speculation and margin borrowing helped push share prices to unsustainable levels. The NYSE experienced severe selling in October 1929, including Black Thursday, Black Monday, and Black Tuesday. The crash was not itself the only cause of the Great Depression, but it became its most famous financial symbol.

The NYSE is often confused with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The NYSE is a stock exchange where securities are traded; the Dow is a market index tracking a selected group of companies. Nasdaq, founded much later in 1971, is another major U.S. stock market but was not the exchange founded by the Buttonwood Agreement.