• Thought of the Day

    Thought of the Day

    2000: Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

    –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library, 1944), p. 30.

Today in Financial History

1982: The first stock-index futures begin trading, as futures contracts on the Value Line stock index open for dealing in the pits of the Kansas City Board of Trade.

Susan Abbott Gidel, "100 Years of Futures Trading: From Domestic Agricultural to World Financial," Futures Industry, December 1999/January 2000, p. 16.

1784: Meeting at the Merchant's Coffee House in downtown New York City, several prominent businessmen led by a young attorney named Alexander Hamilton found the Bank of New York "on liberal principles."