Curb Exchange

Entry in progress—B.P.
   
Wikipedia: American Stock Exchange
NYSE Amex Equities, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) is an American stock exchange situated in New York. AMEX was a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953 it was known as the New York Curb Exchange. On January 17, 2008 NYSE Euronext announced it would acquire the American Stock Exchange for $260 million in stock. On October 1, 2008, NYSE Euronext completed acquisition of the American Stock Exchange. Before the closing of the acquisition, NYSE Euronext announced that the Exchange would be integrated with the Alternext European small-cap exchange and renamed the NYSE Alternext U.S. In March 2009, NYSE Alternext U.S. was changed to NYSE Amex Equities.
 
History
In the early nineteenth century, many new enterprises sprang up in the railroad and construction industries. The New York Exchange Board had then mandated an organization to have a minimum of 100 stocks in order to trade in their exchange. Many of these new companies could not meet such requirements to be listed on the Board. A group of non-member brokers catered to the needs of these companies as they traded their stocks outside the registered exchanges. These brokers came to be known as the curbstone brokers, as they conducted their auctions out in the street.
 
These brokers often traded stocks that were speculative in nature. With the discovery of oil in the later half of nineteenth century, even oil stocks entered into the curb market. By 1865, following the Civil War, stocks in small industrial companies, such as iron and steel, textiles and chemicals were first sold by curbstone brokers. Efforts to organize and standardize the market started early in the twentieth century under Emanuel S Mendels. In 1908, the New York Curb Market Agency was established, to codify trading practices. In 1911, the curbstone brokers came to be known as the New York Curb Market, which then had a formal constitution with brokerage and listing standards. After several years of outdoor trading, the curbstone brokers moved indoors in 1921 to a building on Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan. In 1929, the New York Curb Market changed its name to the New York Curb Exchange. Within no time, the Curb Exchange became the leading international stock market, listing more foreign issues than all other U.S. securities markets combined. In 1953 the Curb Exchange was renamed the American Stock Exchange.
 
The American Stock Exchange merged with the New York Stock Exhange (NYSE Euronext) on October 1, 2008. Post merger, the Amex equities business was branded “NYSE Alternext US.” On December 1, 2008, the Curb Exchange building at 86 Trinity Place was closed, and the Amex Equities trading floor was moved to the NYSE Trading floor at 11 Wall St.
   
The Free Dictionary
Curb Exchange
An early name for what is now the American Stock Exchange. The term derived from the market’s beginnings on a street in downtown New York.