The A B C of Wall Street

The A B C of Wall Street

S. A. Nelson

1900

“The A B C of Wall Street” is a book written by S. A. Nelson to describe many different aspects of Wall Street and the stock market at the time of publication. Nelson writes chapters on the stock market, trading with stocks and bonds, trading specific commodities, the daily life of a stock broker, etc. While there is no clear or direct goal of this book, other than to educate the reader on the basics of Wall Street, it does simultaneously make one fact very clear about the public of this time period: they did not know anything about Wall Street. This financial market was regarded as mysterious during this time period, as Nelson pointed out in the first chapter. Nelson recounts that “Many men seem to be unable to penetrate the mystery in which they believe Wall Street is shrouded.” The financial lingo used in this infrastructure was seen as “financial facts clothed in strange technical terms.” Clearly, if you were not a broker on Wall Street during this time period, you most likely had little to no idea of what really happened on Wall Street. The stock market was also mainly for people who had money.

All of these things help us understand the time period better, because the social class discussed in the novel would have been highly involved (or wanted to be involved) in the stock market at this time, as Lily Bart attempted to do. We know that Wall Street was regarded as mysterious and incomprehensible to many, which is probably why Lily asked Trenor to invest a small sum of money for her. We also know that at the time, the stock market was primarily entered by those who had large sums of money to spend. Lily’s awe and wonderment toward Wall Street was common among people of wealth in that time period. It later became to be regarded as a place where investors could “make a sure dollar”, even though we know this not to be true, especially when 40 years later in the early 1940’s, the stock market crashed with the problems with the war, and the country entered “The Great Depression”.

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Nelson, S. A. The A B C of Wall Street. New York, 1900. Google Books.

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