The area around Wall Street has quite a history: the Lenape, the Native Americans who originally lived there, were the first traders of New York. They traded food and tools with other tribes and beaver furs with European settlers. Later in a dark time in New York’s history, New York was the biggest slave owning colony in the north; its slave trade was based at the slave market on Wall Street. Today, only stocks -- pieces of ownership in a company -- are traded on Wall Street.  

In the days of the Lenape and even the slave trade, trade was done person to person, but with today’s technology, Wall Street’s trade is now digital with transactions between institutions all over the world.

Many people take issue with Wall Street saying that it doesn’t create any physical value. They say Wall Street only buys and sells bets that certain stocks get more expensive or less expensive and that the financial industry becomes rich at small business people’s expense. Wall Street against Main Street (the small businesses and people who don’t work in the financial industry) is an ongoing conflict.

However, New York City wouldn’t be what it is without the big banks and the stock exchanges. The financial industry provides about one million jobs in NYC and pays eight billion dollars in city taxes every year. That’s enough to pay for fund all the city’s police, fire, and sanitation departments.

☀ Cool Fact
Did you know there are 6,200 tons (the weight of 3,000 cars) of gold stored underneath Downtown Manhattan? That’s quite the treasure chest.