Customer Reviews

A History of the Global Stock Market: From Ancient Rome to Silicon Valley

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i've been looking for a book that discusses the history of markets around the world, including stock markets, and this one does a decent job of filling part of that desire. what interests me is the way in which we, as humans, have gone from an idea of selling concrete things to abstract things, and how that's evolved over time.

smith's book starts with some of the precursors to the modern stock market, and he'll return to some of those markets (such as the french and german bourses) when the focus shifts to the american and london markets (which have come to dominate the global market perspective). quite a bit of the book seems to race to this time period, basically feeling like a big cheer for the american way. not that this is wrong, i just wanted a broader perspective.

as you might expect, because the book is written by an american in the past few years, it's lean on early history. it covers some interesting parts well, such as the rises and crashes in the early french markets, but it could do better. it also plays a decent bit to the japanese markets (and the huge asian market crash at the end of the 20th century), which is pretty nice, and it does a decent job of introducing options markets. it doesn't cover the russian markets well, or the overall trend of very small markets building up around the world currently. too little time to observe, says smith. and while this is accurate, it's not too early to discuss what forces are behind these changes more in depth.

while i'm still looking for that one great volume, this one is a fair start. 3 to 3.5 stars.