City Stocks & Shares

City stocks and shares can probably trace their origins back to the late seventeenth century when companies such as the Muscovy Company and the East India company sold shares in future profits to be made from trips to China and India. Fitting out ships and funding crews for these speculative voyages was extremely costly and in order to defray these costs shares in any future profits made from these voyages were sold to merchants.

Before long the idea of raising money for all manner of ventures including draining the fens caught on and by 1695 there were 140 joint stock companies trading shares in the coffee shops of Change Alley in the City of London. It was in these coffee shops that the first list of prices for City stocks and shares called, ‘The Course of the Exchange and Other Things’, was published.

In1697 a law was passed “to restrain the number and ill practice of brokers and stockjobbers” which required all brokers to be licensed and to take an oath promising to act lawfully. For a number of years the trade in City stocks and shares thrived and the market grew ever larger. However with echoes that resonate today it couldn’t last and in 1748 a company set up by John Blunt and the British government sold shares at greatly inflated and unrealistic prices causing a huge demand and an equally huge financial bubble. The company in question was the South Sea Company which gave rise to the infamous South Sea Bubble which burst leaving many investors ruined and the stock market and City stocks and shares in the doldrums for many years.

Today City stocks and shares are a global business with the London Stock Exchange recognised as one of the world’s leading financial markets trading not only in stocks and shares but in all forms of equities, bonds, hedge funds, futures and every conceivable form of financial vehicle.

As may be imagined all this global financial trading no longer takes place in the coffee houses of Change Alley. In July 2004 The London Stock Exchange moved into its current premises in Paternoster Square still well within the square mile that delineates the original City of London.

Today in the aftermath of the latest burst bubble, not South Sea this time but subprime mortgages and toxic debt, it would seem that we have learned little from history. City Stocks and Shares and The London Stock Market will however in all probability continue to thrive.