Nasdaq: A History of the Market That Changed the World

New Year's Eve, 1999: The world fixed its eyes on Manhattan's Times Square. And the brightest light that December evening came from the seven-story television monitor covering the Nasdaq's newly opened MarketSite at 43rd and Broadway. In many ways, the Nasdaq's phenomenal climb during the '90s epitomized the optimism Americans felt as they entered the new millennium—just as its fall would later reflect the nation's anxieties in a post-crash, post-9/11 world.

Indeed, throughout its history the Nasdaq has not only mirrored our times, it has profoundly influence them. What started as a Depression-era organization designed to combat stock market fraud—and struggled for decades as the upstart of Wall Street—is now vying with the venerated New York Stock Exchange as the global icon of corporate wealth and success. The Nasdaq fueled the growth of bedrock New Economy giants like Microsoft, Oracle, and Intel. In the process it became the first true online community, linking traders, investors, Main Street, and Wall Street together via a hyperfast, seamless electronic network.

In Nasdaq, author and journalist Mark Ingebretsen digs deep into the "Market of Markets" to reveal the famous (and the infamous) characters and events that helped shape it, the scandal that rocked it, and the vision of one of its leaders, Frank Zarb, to create a truly global trading arena—the most powerful engine of capital creation in history. It's a story that reaches from the hallowed financial firms in New York to the billion-dollar start-ups in Silicon Valley, from the farthest reaches of Europe and Asia to the hometown investors who helped the Nasdaq revolutionize the way stocks are traded.

Nasdaq picks up where Charles Geisst's Wall Street: A History leaves off and masterfully chronicles one of the most important eras in global financial history. You'll discover a drama like no other and realize what most people don't know, or don't understand, about the Nasdaq.