Captain's Quarters

[JD400]

This Day in Financial History. . . .
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Learn what happened in business in today’s past


February 02:

1998: Less than three years after breaking the 500 mark, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index closes above 1,000 for the first time, finishing the day at 1001.27.

David M. Blitzer, chief investment strategist, Standard & Poor's Corp.; Museum of American Financial History.

1968: With Wall Street fighting off a blizzard of trading paperwork, the New York Stock Exchange extends the settlement period -- the time for exchanging final payment -- on stock transactions to "T + 5," or five days after the trade date.

"Today in NYSE History," at www.nyse.com/about/TodayInNYSE.html

1929: With the Dow Jones Industrial Average up an astounding 60.5% over the last 12 months, the Federal Reserve Board reminds investors that "the Federal Reserve Act does not?contemplate the use of the resources of the Federal Reserve System for the creation or extension of speculative credit." But the Fed doesn't back up its talk with any decisive action, so traders laugh off the warning and send the Dow up another 20% over the coming months. Then comes the Great Crash.

John Brooks, Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920-1938 (Harper & Row, New York, 1969), p. 95; Phyllis S. Pierce, ed., The Dow Jones Averages 1885-1980 (DowJones Irwin, Homewood, IL, 1982), not paginated.

1869: In the first warning sign of the coming Panic of 1869, a New York newspaper reports that an IRS auditor has discovered that trustees of several city churches have taken $2 million in ecclesiastical trust funds and used them to speculate in stocks; what's more, several parishes have taken out mortgages on their church buildings to answer margin calls. "Where the shepherd wanders wool-hunting," notes chronicler James Medbery, "the sheep are apt to go astray."

James K. Medbery, Men and Mysteries of Wall Street (Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1870; reprinted, Fraser Publishing Co., Wells, VT, 1968) p. 198.

1848: For $15 million, the United States purchases the entire territories of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas, along with parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, from Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States now stretches "from sea to shining sea."

http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/ghtreaty/