16-20 Wall Street Facts
16. Bernard Madoff started as a penny stock trader with only $5,000 – Going on to become the sixth largest Market Maker on Wall Street in 2008. – Source
17. The bank frauds/market manipulations such as those committed by Wall Street with the aluminum markets are not only not new but were foreseen and warned against by then future supreme court justice Louis Brandeis in a series of articles published 100 years ago in Harper’s Weekly. – Source
18. Since 1981, the state of New York annually collects over $14B from Wall Street and promptly gives it right back. – Source
19. There is an “Eddie Murphy Rule” in the Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act, inspired by the plot of the 1983 comedy Trading Places, that bans the use of misappropriated government information to trade in the commodity markets. – Source
20. Only two people committed suicide by jumping from the top of a building in Wall Street during the Great Depression and only one of them was a CEO. – Source
21-26 Wall Street Facts
21. Roger Babson correctly predicted the Wall Street Crash of 1929 using the unorthodox notion that gravity and Sir Isaac Newton’s law of action and reaction can be used to explain movement in the stock markets. – Source
22. Between 2010 and 2012 automated trading grew from 50% to 84% of all Wall Street activity. The remaining 16 is dominated by mutual funds, hedge funds, pensions, and brokerages. – Source
23. Dead cat bounce is a Wall Street term that refers to a small, brief recovery in the price of a declining stock. – Source
24. The Pecora Commission exposed dangerous banking practices leading to the 1929 Wall Street crash and led to the Glass-Steagall Act. – Source
25. InfoSpace was praised by Wall Street analysts and at its peak was estimated to be worth $31 billion. It became the largest internet business in the American northwest. – Source
