The birth of the stock market

1606

The earliest known share in the East India Company, VOC, was in fact not a share. It was proof of registration in the VOC’s records of capital investors entered against a name and stating the sum deposited. Year after year, this owner kept a record of how much dividend he received on the reverse side. Soon after the VOC was established in 1602 there was a lively trade in the shares on the Beurs, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Stock jobbers acted as middlemen. They ensured there were shares with a standardised nominal value. At the end of the seventeenth century the market value of a VOC share was five times higher than the nominal value.