Tham khảo tài liệu 'a quick look at financial markets library binding_4', tài chính - ngân hàng, đầu tư chứng khoán phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | w w when people purchase something as an investment whether it is a piece of jewelry a racehorse a painting or shares of stock they anticipate the day when they will sell it for a profit. If they do not anticipate selling it for a profit it is not an investment it is just a toy. Racehorses jewelry and paintings can be good investments but there must be someone willing to buy when you want to sell. For many investors the attraction of stocks and bonds is their liquidity the ease with which they can be turned into cash. Things are turned into cash in a market which is a place where all kinds of goods are bought and sold. Stockbrokers do their buying and selling of stocks and bonds at a market called a stock exchange. In fact it was a need for a marketplace that gave birth to the New York Stock Exchange around the time of the Revolutionary War. The secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton had asked Congress to issue about 80 million worth of government bonds in order to pay for the war. At that time there were not too many stocks being marketed but people were 43 buying bonds. About this time too banks began to spring up in America and they had stock that they wanted to sell. A bank can be a corporation just like Ferdis Widgets and sell its stock to investors. Soon it seemed that there were some securities to be bought and sold in the new nation but who had them and where to buy and sell them was a problem. A group of men who had been selling securities on their own got together under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street in New York City and decided to form an association. They promised each other that they would not buy securities for anyone else unless the buyer paid a quarter percent commission. It was 1792 and the New York Stock Exchange had been born. Today the New York Stock Exchange is often called by its nickname The Big Board. In 1849 almost sixty years after the founding of the New York Stock Exchange another group of men who sold securities gathered in New