How to Build a Stock Exchange

In this, the podcast’s last episode, I finally, absolutely, and almost completely definitively, tell you how to build a stock exchange (and who invented unicorns). Transcript ‘It had been a bad trip … fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way … Continue reading Episode 18. How to build a stock exchange (at last) →

This episode examines the racialized structures of finance. It sets off from the infamous Zong massacre and legal case of 1781 to explore the patterns of exploitation that underpin finance, and to show that contemporary finance is built on structures and practices established by eighteenth century slavery. It finds modern parallels in the speculative credit … Continue reading Episode 17. White markets, black markets →

This episode explores the technological transformations that have led to markets at the speed of light: algorithmic traders and flash crashes. Yet for all the images of terrifying AI we discover  that stock markets in the cloud are more rooted in material than ever before, pushing against the laws of physics in the pursuit of … Continue reading Episode 16. Markets at the speed of light →

This episode explores how the forces of globalisation reshaped London’s small company stock markets. We discover how a commodities boom led to a gold rush in financing resource firms, and tumble into the pitfalls of exploration financing. We see the old hierarchies of politics and capital reproduced in this new sector and witness the eventual … Continue reading Episode 15. Opportunity lost →

What better week to tackle fear and greed in the stock market? Under the shadow of global financial meltdown, this episode explores the nature of cognition in the markets: how market actors see, choose and act. Moving from the model of homo oeconomicus in the efficient market to the irrational animal spirits of behavioural economics, … Continue reading Episode 14. Seeing and doing in the market →

This episode returns to 1999, the year of dotcom mania to explore how rivers of cash from private investors – other people’s money – changed the shape of finance forever. OPM paid for new infrastructure, made finance mainstream in the media, and helped establish a stock exchange for small company stocks. Fortunes were made – … Continue reading Episode 13. Other people’s money →

Some stories incarcerate, others emancipate. This episode explores the founding of the London Stock Exchange’s junior market, AIM. It follows the narrative of UK plc, exploring how it shapes the Exchange’s actions. We hear how the story slowly changes into something different, a vision of the market as the high temple of capitalism. We find … Continue reading Episode 12. ‘The High Temple of Capitalism’ →

In 1995 the London Stock exchange set up its junior market, AIM, an engine for UK plc. This episode explores how the narrative of entrepreneurial Britain brought this new market into being. That’s how the story goes, at least. The history turns out to be a little more complicated. This episode looks back to London … Continue reading Episode 11. UK plc →

Stories shape our world, and stock markets are no exception. This episode explores the entanglements of fiction and finance, from Robinson Crusoe to American Psycho. We discover how Tom Wolfe cut a deal with Wall Street, making finance male, rich and white, and see how the concept of ‘smartness’ perpetuates elitism and discrimination in Wall … Continue reading Episode 10. Where real men make real money →

What’s in a price? This episode sets out to answer that question, via Joseph Wright’s Experiment on a Bird in a Pump, the construction of the London interbank lending rate, and some ruminations on the nature of fact. As for why it matters, we visit 80’s London for a tale of greed, sausages and a … Continue reading Episode 9. Finding prices, making prices →

Modern stock exchanges couldn’t exist without wires. They are virtual, global, infinitely expanding. Their trading floors are humming servers. But no one ever planned this transformation, and it took many by surprise. This episode explores the long processes of automation throughout the second half of the twentieth century. We hear about engineers, screens, and how … Continue reading Episode 8. Wires! →

1980s Wall Street was as inventive as it was ostentatious. New kinds of deal turned the relationship between finance and society on its head: collateralized mortgage obligations made homeowners into raw material for profit, while the leveraged buyout allowed corporate raiders to tear up companies in the name of shareholder value, all this backed by … Continue reading Episode 7. The New Deals →

We can’t make sense of contemporary stock exchanges without understanding the huge changes that swept through finance in the 1980s. This episode explores those upheavals at the level of states and markets, and the of lived reality of Britain’s markets: the collapse of Bretton Woods, the Iron Lady’s reforms, striking miners and a new kind … Continue reading Episode 6. The decade when greed became good. →

Social interactions – rules and rituals, norms and codes of practice – are the glue that holds a stock market together. This was especially so in the open outcry markets of the twentieth century. The episode looks at the strange societies of Chicago’s pits and London’s ‘Old House’. What did it feel like to cram … Continue reading Episode 5. ‘Mind your eye!’ Rules and rituals in the markets →

This episode takes an anecdotal wander through the business of financing start-ups. Our guide is Sixtus, an old-Etonian who imported ‘business angel’ investing to the UK. Along the way, I’m waspish about public schoolboys, perceptive about pickles, explore the difference between equity and debt, and wonder whether stock markets must always be about those billion … Continue reading Episode 4. Pickles, public schoolboys, and the business of financing start-ups →

From King William III’s empty coffers in the eighteenth century to David Cameron’s ‘big, open and comprehensive offer’ in the twenty-first, penniless governments have had to go cap in hand to the markets. Stock exchanges have always been on hand to help out, though not at any price, and states have assisted by settling matters … Continue reading Episode 3. On Brexit and borrowing: the entanglements of markets and state. →

How did Chicago’s stockhouses lead to one of the greatest financial markets on earth? This episode explores how commerce and technology shaped the founding of the Chicago Board of Trade and gave birth to financial derivatives. It tells how the telegraph transformed trading, how the pits functioned as human computers turning pigs into prices, and … Continue reading Episode 2. From pigs to prices: a Chicago story →

Finance matters. We’re off to build a stock exchange, but first of all I’ll spend a little time explaining why financial markets matter. This episode explores how financial markets – a crucial mechanism for the distribution of wealth – are implicated in our present political malaise and looks at some of the ways that finance … Continue reading Episode 1. Finance matters →