“A Direct Personal Stake”: Mass Investment and the New York Stock Exchange

Beginning in the immediate postwar moment and extending until the 1960s, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)—an institution at the very center of Anglo-American financial cultures—developed and distributed a booklet for working-class Americans that actually made stock recommendations. Contradicting its self-image as a neutral and unbiased financial marketplace, the NYSE developed a list of “conservative” stocks particularly suited for the “uninitiated.” By recommending a range of stocks that would be particularly suited to working-class investors who had little knowledge of the financial world, the NYSE launched itself into an entirely new field in which it sought not only the exchange but also the promotion of corporate securities. This departure is striking less as an attempt to promote the interests of particular corporate clients, than as a signal of a broader project—often urgently pursued—that centered around the goal of “mass investment.”