The History of the Stock Market There was a time when "stocks of business companies were rarely bought and sold because few companies were considered promising financial profits" (Blume 21). This is hard to believe considering that almost everyone has invested in some stock today. The stock market has gone through some distinct changes since its inception and has evolved into a shaping force in today's world. There is an idea that started the fire that produced the stock market: capitalism. Everything the stock market is, and was, rooted in the basic idea of ​​capitalism. Without that idea, stocks and bonds would never have been born. Capitalism is an “economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits obtained in a free market” (Peterson). When a person buys a stock, it means that he owns a part of the company in which he has invested. The average person can then invest in a public company and receive a share of that company's success or failure. This process helps not only smart investors, but also companies. Investors' money has to go somewhere, and that place is the treasury of the company they backed (Simonson). The company then uses that money for its own financial needs, providing the company with income beyond just sales profits. So, investors make or lose money based on how much the company makes. Basically, people invest in an idea and make money based on how that idea performs in the real world (Blume 35-39). While the stock market is based on capitalism, this type of enterprise was shunned by the community in 1792 due to the financial panic (Blum... middle of paper... inflation. This caused stocks to collapse. Real estate and fixed income have become the leading assets. From the 1980s onwards, the market enjoyed many years of prosperity, with the 1990s being the market's decade of greatest growth. However, none of that it would have been possible if it wasn't state for lessons learned in the 1920s (Brown 90-107) Learning from the past is very important, and a great example to learn from is the crash of 1929. We caught monopolies before they got too out of control, but we fell short. to stop the small investor from crashing the market (Sharp 210). We must learn from history to ensure we never make the same mistakes Wall Street made at the turn of the century. However, no one can predict the future with the growth of the new types of stocks, online trading, and faster, riskier trading, we are preparing for another crash?