THE TICKER CONNEC TING TO COLLEC TIONS
MoAF Launches “Making History Series”
JAN 9
1835
In October, the Museum introduced a
“Making History Series,” featuring indi-
vidual artifacts that represent significant
milestones in financial history. The objects
featured in this Series will rotate periodi-
cally to tell stories of major events, inven-
tions and innovations in finance.
The first objects on display include
two items from the Museum’s collection:
the April 1966 issue of Fortune magazine
in which Carol Loomis coined the term
“hedge fund” and a 1971 photo of the Nas-
daq Data Center.
Carol Loomis is a financial journal-
ist who held the longest tenure of any
employee in Fortune’s history, starting as
a research assistant in 1954 and retiring as
senior editor-at-large in 2014. Her land-
mark article, “The Jones Nobody Keeps Up
With,” described the investment practice of
sociologist and journalist Alfred Winslow
Jones. Jones’s “hedge” concept put him in a
position to profit on both rising and falling
stocks, as he utilized strategic short posi-
tions to protect himself and his investors in
case he misjudged the general market trend.
Most investment strategies at the time
protected a portion of the capital by
maintaining cash reserves or bonds. It is
debated who started the first “hedge fund,”
whether it be Jones, value investor Benja-
min Graham or an ancient Greek philoso-
pher named Thales, but Loomis’ name for
this type of fund stuck. Her full article can
be viewed here: http://bit.ly/moafloomis.
By Sarah Poole, Collections Manager
Carol Loomis views the “Making History Series”
case featuring the 1966 issue of Fortune with
her now-famous “hedge fund” article. Photograph of the NASDAQ data center, 1971.
Founded in 1971, National Association
of Security Dealers Automated Quota-
tions (NASDAQ) was the world’s first
all-electronic stock exchange. The photo-
graph on display in the Museum shows
the NASDAQ’s early data center. The rev-
olutionary system has attracted many suc-
cessful technology companies throughout
the exchange’s history, including Apple,
Microsoft, Dell, Amazon and Google.
The exchange split from the National
Association of Security Dealers (NASD) in
2000-2001, becoming the publicly-traded
Nasdaq, Inc. Today, Nasdaq lists more than
3,700 companies worldwide with more than $10 trillion in total market value.
These objects are joined in the “Making
History Series” by a 1995 New York Stock
Exchange wireless handheld computer,
on loan to the Museum from Michael
Einersen and Nicholas Marsala. This com-
puter was used to trade 1,000 shares of
IBM on the NYSE on September 25, 1995,
marking an end to the use of paper buy
and sell orders to trade stocks.
The “Making History Series” cases are
located throughout the Museum exhibit
galleries and can be identified by the mul-
ticolored timelines along the tops of their
labels.
The earliest-known suspension of trading in a US stock occurs, as the New York Stock & Exchange
Board (precursor to the NYSE) halts activity in the Morris Canal & Banking Co. amid widespread
manipulation of its shares.
8 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2017 | www.MoAF.org