When Did the US Stock Market Start? 1792

The US stock market started on May 17, 1792, when 24 brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement on Wall Street in New York. An older market beat them to it: brokers in Philadelphia had organized a board two years earlier, in 1790. The New York group wrote a formal constitution in 1817, called itself the New York Stock & Exchange Board, and took the name New York Stock Exchange in 1863.

When did the US stock market start? The 1792 Buttonwood Agreement

The founding document is two sentences long. The signers promised to trade securities only with each other, and to charge a minimum commission of one quarter of one percent on every sale. That is the entire text. It named no building, set no hours and listed no companies. Tradition places the signing under a buttonwood tree, an American sycamore, outside 68 Wall Street, which is where the agreement gets its name.

Two ideas in that short pact still run the market today. The first is membership: only signers could deal with signers, the ancestor of the exchange member and of the modern broker-dealer. The second is the fixed commission, which lasted until May 1, 1975, when the Securities and Exchange Commission abolished fixed rates and discount brokerage began.

Which came first, Philadelphia or New York?

Philadelphia. The board of brokers there organized in 1790, two years ahead of the Buttonwood signing, and traded government debt issued to pay for the Revolutionary War. It ran under later names for more than two centuries, and Nasdaq bought it in 2008, where it continues today as an options venue.

New York overtook it during the 1800s. The 1817 constitution turned an informal circle of traders into an institution with a president, written rules, fines for members who broke them, and a fixed daily routine. The board renamed itself the New York Stock Exchange in 1863 and moved into its Broad Street home in 1865.

When did Nasdaq start, and when did trading go electronic?

Nasdaq opened on February 8, 1971. It began as a quotation system rather than an exchange: screens carried the bid and ask prices at which dealers were willing to trade over-the-counter stocks, replacing printed sheets that circulated by mail. The trades themselves were still agreed by telephone. Automated execution arrived during the 1980s, and Nasdaq registered as a national securities exchange in 2006.

The NYSE travelled the other way, from floor to screen. Regulation NMS was adopted in 2005 and phased in through 2007. Over the same stretch the exchange merged with the electronic Archipelago platform in 2006 and rolled out its Hybrid Market, and electronic matching became the default path for an order.

Why does the trading day run 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern?

Nothing is natural about those two clock times. They are the current setting of a schedule that has been rewritten many times. The NYSE ran a 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. weekday session for decades, plus a short Saturday morning session. Saturday trading ended in 1952, and the weekday close moved to 3:30 p.m. that September. The close moved again to 4:00 p.m. in 1974. The open moved from 10:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. in 1985, which set the six and a half hour session in use today. Our stock market hours guide walks through that clock session by session.

The five day week is visible in the data itself. The panel below counts every calendar day of 2019 by weekday and marks the ones on which SPY, the S&P 500 ETF, printed a daily bar.

SELECT
    formatDateTime(cal.day, '%W')   AS weekday,
    countIf(s.sessions > 0)         AS trading_days,
    count()                         AS calendar_days
FROM
(
    SELECT toDate('2019-01-01') + arrayJoin(range(365)) AS day
) AS cal
LEFT JOIN
(
    SELECT
        date     AS d,
        count()  AS sessions
    FROM global_markets.stocks_daily_aggs
    WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
      AND date >= '2019-01-01'
      AND date <  '2020-01-01'
    GROUP BY d
) AS s ON s.d = cal.day
GROUP BY weekday
ORDER BY min(toDayOfWeek(cal.day))

Saturday appears 52 times in that year and carries 0 sessions. Monday appears 52 times and carries 48, the gap being holidays that fall on that weekday. A reader in 1950 would have seen a different picture, with a sixth column half the height of the others.

The clock inside a single session is just as lopsided. The next panel takes one pinned month, October 2024, splits it into 30 minute buckets on the New York clock, and measures how much of SPY's monthly volume printed in each bucket.

SELECT
    formatDateTime(
        toStartOfInterval(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'), INTERVAL 30 MINUTE),
        '%H:%i'
    )                                       AS et_time,
    round(toFloat64(sum(volume)) / 1e6, 1)  AS million_shares,
    round(100 * toFloat64(sum(volume)) / toFloat64((
        SELECT sum(volume)
        FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
        WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
          AND window_start >= '2024-10-01'
          AND window_start <  '2024-11-01'
    )), 2)                                  AS share_of_volume_pct
FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
  AND window_start >= '2024-10-01'
  AND window_start <  '2024-11-01'
GROUP BY et_time
ORDER BY et_time

The panel starts at 04:00 ET, where 0.06% of the month's shares printed, and ends at 19:30 ET with 0.08%. Any bucket outside 9:30 to 4:00 is extended-hours trading, the subject of our after-hours and premarket trading guide. Between the two ends the chart draws a U, with the heaviest buckets sitting at the boundaries of the regular session.

Why the market closes on holidays that no longer match the calendar

The holiday schedule is exchange policy, not federal law, and it carries its own history. Washington's Birthday is still the statutory name of the February holiday, and the statute pins it to the third Monday, a date that can never fall on February 22, the birthday it marks. Good Friday is not a federal holiday at all, yet US equity markets have closed for it since the 1800s. Columbus Day and Veterans Day work the other way: the bond market shuts and the stock market stays open. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in June 2021, and the NYSE first observed it in 2022, making it the newest full closure on the list.

Markets have also closed outside the published calendar. The exchange shut for months at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and US equity markets stayed closed for the rest of the week after the attacks of September 11, 2001. How markets recover from crashes traces what the tape did after events of that kind.

Past closures are recoverable even when no calendar is at hand. A weekday on which nothing traded was a day the market was shut. This panel counts those days for each of ten pinned years.

SELECT
    toString(toYear(cal.day))           AS year,
    countIf(ifNull(s.sessions, 0) = 0)  AS weekday_closures
FROM
(
    SELECT toDate('2014-01-01') + arrayJoin(range(3652)) AS day
) AS cal
LEFT JOIN
(
    SELECT
        date     AS d,
        count()  AS sessions
    FROM global_markets.stocks_daily_aggs
    WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
      AND date >= '2014-01-01'
      AND date <  '2024-01-01'
    GROUP BY d
) AS s ON s.d = cal.day
WHERE toDayOfWeek(cal.day) BETWEEN 1 AND 5
  AND cal.day < toDate('2024-01-01')
GROUP BY year
ORDER BY year

The count runs from 9 in 2014 to 10 in 2023, across 10 years. US equity markets give up about ten weekday sessions a year to holidays, and the exact figure moves by one or two: a new holiday adds a closure, and a fixed-date holiday landing on a weekend can remove one.

How a daily call became the opening and closing auction

The 1817 board did not trade continuously. Its president read out each listed security in turn, twice a day, and members bid from assigned seats in the room, which is the origin of the phrase "a seat on the exchange". Everyone trading that security did so at that moment, at a single price. That mechanism is a call auction.

Continuous trading replaced the call through the 1800s, but the call never disappeared. It moved to the two ends of the day. The opening auction and the closing auction each collect orders over a window and match them at one price, the 1817 procedure run by a matching engine instead of a man with a list. Our opening auction explainer covers the order types and the imbalance information that goes with it.

The concentration that mechanism produces is measurable. This panel takes five household names over the same pinned month, sums each clock minute across every session, and reports each name's single busiest minute as a share of its month.

SELECT
    symbol,
    argMax(clock_et, minute_volume)                          AS busiest_clock_et,
    round(100 * max(minute_volume) / sum(minute_volume), 2)  AS busiest_minute_pct
FROM
(
    SELECT
        ticker                                                                 AS symbol,
        formatDateTime(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'), '%H:%i')  AS clock_et,
        toFloat64(sum(volume))                                                 AS minute_volume
    FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
    WHERE ticker IN ('SPY', 'AAPL', 'MSFT', 'KO', 'JNJ')
      AND window_start >= '2024-10-01'
      AND window_start <  '2024-11-01'
    GROUP BY symbol, clock_et
)
GROUP BY symbol
ORDER BY busiest_minute_pct DESC

KO is the most concentrated of the five: 4.18% of everything that traded in the name during the month printed inside one clock minute, at 15:59 ET. Even the least concentrated, AAPL, put 3.72% of its month into the minute at 09:30 ET. Out of the hundreds of minutes in a trading day, one of them carries that much of the tape, which is the 1792 call auction still doing its job.

A timeline of the US stock market, 1790 to today

• 1790: Brokers in Philadelphia organize the first US stock exchange.
• 1792: Twenty four brokers sign the Buttonwood Agreement in New York on May 17.
• 1817: New York brokers adopt a constitution and form the New York Stock & Exchange Board.
• 1863: The board renames itself the New York Stock Exchange.
• 1867: The stock ticker begins printing prices onto paper tape.
• 1896: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is first published, with 12 stocks.
• 1934: The Securities Exchange Act creates the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• 1952: Saturday trading ends and the weekday close moves to 3:30 p.m.
• 1971: Nasdaq opens on February 8 as the first electronic quotation system.
• 1974: The weekday close moves to 4:00 p.m.
• 1975: Fixed commissions end on May 1.
• 1985: The open moves from 10:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
• 2005 to 2007: Regulation NMS phases in and electronic matching becomes the default.

FAQ

When did the US stock market start?

The New York market dates to the Buttonwood Agreement of May 17, 1792, signed by 24 brokers on Wall Street. The first organized US exchange was in Philadelphia, in 1790. The New York group formalized itself with a constitution in 1817 and took the name New York Stock Exchange in 1863.

What is the oldest stock exchange in the United States?

Philadelphia's, organized in 1790. It traded government debt from the Revolutionary War era, operated for more than two centuries under several names, and became part of Nasdaq in 2008.

When did Nasdaq start trading?

February 8, 1971. Nasdaq began as an electronic quotation system showing dealer bids and offers for over-the-counter stocks on screens. Trades were negotiated by telephone at first, with automated execution following in the 1980s.

Why does the US stock market open at 9:30 a.m. Eastern?

The opening bell moved to 9:30 a.m. in 1985, from the 10:00 a.m. start that had stood for decades. The 4:00 p.m. close dates to 1974. Neither time is fixed by law, and both are exchange decisions that have changed before.

Why is the stock market closed on Good Friday?

Good Friday is not a federal holiday, yet the NYSE has closed for it since the 1800s and the practice carried into the modern schedule. The reverse also happens: the stock market stays open on Columbus Day and Veterans Day, when the bond market is closed.

Every panel here carries the exact query beneath it, so any figure on this page can be recounted from the same data. To count the sessions in a past year, or to see where a name's volume lands inside the trading day, ask the question in plain English on the Strasmore terminal.