Business & Finance: Tides, Waves, Ripples

At the turn of the century. Wall Street was run by men in muttonchop whiskers, high square derbies, baggy trousers; they thought of stock prices as unrelated quotations on individual issues, often the result of manipulation. Charles H. Dow, a small, precise man, first editor of The Wall Street Journal, had a different idea; he had been keeping averages of railroad and industrial stock prices since 1897, had found beneath individual fluctuations a trend of the market as a whole.

Charles Dow died in 1902 without having made much impression on cynical Wall Street....

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!