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The World's First Stock Exchange. How the Amsterdam Market for Dutch East India Company Shares Became a Modern Securities Ma UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The world’s first stock exchange: how the Amsterdam market for Dutch East India Company shares became a modern securities market, 1602-1700 Petram, L.O. Publication date 2011 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Petram, L. O. (2011). The world’s first stock exchange: how the Amsterdam market for Dutch East India Company shares became a modern securities market, 1602-1700. Eigen Beheer. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:05 Oct 2021 THE WORLD’S FIRST STOCK EXCHANGE How the Amsterdam market for Dutch East India Company shares became a modern securities market, 1602-1700 Lodewijk Petram Frontcover: Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde, Town hall on Dam Square (1672), detail, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam THE WORLD’S FIRST STOCK EXCHANGE How the Amsterdam market for Dutch East India Company shares became a modern securities market, 1602-1700 ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit op vrijdag 28 januari 2011, te 13.00 uur door Lodewijk Otto Petram geboren te Apeldoorn Promotor: prof. dr. L. Noordegraaf Copromotor: dr. C.M. Lesger Overige leden: dr. O.C. Gelderblom dr. J. Goggin dr. M.C. ’t Hart prof. dr. H.J. den Heijer prof. dr. A. de Jong em. prof. dr. L. Neal prof. dr. H.F.K. van Nierop Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen CONTENTS List of figures VII List of tables VIII List of maps VIII List of abbreviations IX Introduction 1 Context, historiography and theory 2 Scope and structure 6 Sources 9 Part I – Taking the measure of the market 1 A chronology of the market 17 Introduction 17 1602 – The subscription 17 1607 – The emergence of a derivatives market 20 1609-10 – Isaac le Maire 24 1609-18 – First dividend distributions 28 1611 – Exchange building 30 1622 – The relation between the company and its shareholders 32 1630s and 1640s – Intermediation and a changing composition of the trading community 36 1660s – Trading clubs and rescontre 45 Conclusions 52 2 Long-term developments 59 Introduction 59 Market activity 59 Number of traders 64 Share price and dividends 65 Divergent developments: Amsterdam and peripheral markets 68 Conclusions 74 Part II – The organization of the market 3 Contract enforcement 91 Introduction 91 The legal framework 97 Private enforcement mechanism 107 Conclusions 114 Appendix – Short summary of court cases 115 4 Risk seeking and risk mitigation 118 Introduction 118 Counterparty risk 120 Portfolio risk 134 Conclusions 145 5 Information 148 Introduction 148 Investors’ information needs in the first decade of the seventeenth century 150 Market reactions to information 156 The information networks of Christian and Jewish share traders 165 Conclusions 175 Conclusions 180 Epilogue – Reassessing Confusión de confusiones 186 Summary (in Dutch) 190 Appendices 196 Appendix A – Monthly share price Amsterdam chamber VOC, 1602-1698 196 Appendix B – Dividend distributions VOC, 1602-1700 204 Appendix C – Glossary 206 Acknowledgements 210 Bibliography 211 Primary sources 211 Published primary sources 211 Secondary literature 213 Index of names and places 219 VI LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Forward contract used in a transaction between Willem Muijlman and Philips de Bacher, 2 September 1644. 54 Figure 1.2 Amsterdam Exchange of Hendrick de Keyser, etching by C.J. Visscher (1612) 55 Figure 1.3 Amsterdam Exchange of Hendrick de Keyser, interior, painting by Job Adriaensz. Berckheyde (between 1670 and 1690) 56 Figure 2.1 5-day period share transfers, VOC Amsterdam chamber, 1609 76 Figure 2.2 5-day period share transfers, VOC Amsterdam chamber, 1639 77 Figure 2.3 5-day period share transfers, VOC Amsterdam chamber, 1667 78 Figure 2.4 5-day period share transfers, VOC Amsterdam chamber, 1672 79 Figure 2.5 5-day period share transfers, VOC Amsterdam chamber, 1688 80 Figure 2.6 Monthly VOC share price, Amsterdam chamber, September 1602 – February 1698. Missing values derived from linear interpolation. 81 Figure 2.7 Monthly VOC share price, Amsterdam chamber, September 1602 – February 1698 82 Figure 2.9 Yearly high-low-average VOC share price, Amsterdam chamber, 1602- 1698 83 Figure 2.10 Yearly dividends as a percentage of the nominal value of VOC shares, 1620-1699 84 Figure 2.12 Dividend as a percentage of market value, 1620-1697 85 Figure 2.13 Real dividend and VOC share price, 1630-98 86 Figure 2.14 Share price data of the Amsterdam, Middelburg, Enkhuizen and Hoorn chambers of the VOC, 1611-1685 87 Figure 4.1 Forward and repo transactions represented in diagram form 146 Figure 4.2 Size of loans granted on shares pledged as collateral, 1649-1688 147 Figure 5.1 VOC share price, 7 July 1671 – 31 December 1672 178 Figure 5.2 VOC share price, 6 January 1688 – 22 November 1688 179 VII LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Spot transactions of Christoffel and Jan Raphoen, 1626-42 38 Table 2.1 Total number of shareholders’ accounts, Amsterdam chamber VOC, 1602 and 1679-1695; number of active accounts and share transfers, 1609, 1639, 1667, 1672 and 1688 64 Table 2.2 Share price data of the Middelburg, Enkhuizen, and Hoorn chambers of the VOC 75 Table 3.1 Court of Holland, Extended sentences 115 Table 3.2 Court of Holland, Case files 117 Table 3.3 High Council, Extended sentences 117 Table 4.1 Estimated costs of Jeronimus Velters’ forward and repo transactions 125 LIST OF MAPS Map 1.1 Main share trade locations in the first decade of the seventeenth century 57! Map 1.2 Main share trade locations after the opening of the Exchange (1611) 58! VIII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BT Bibliotheca Thysiana, Leyden DAS J.R. Bruijn, F.S. Gaastra and I. Schöffer, Dutch-Asiatic shipping in the 17th and 18th centuries (3 vols., The Hague 1979-87). EIC English East India Company NA Nationaal Archief, The Hague PA Persmuseum Amsterdam PIG Portugees-Israëlitische Gemeente RAU Het Utrechts Archief SAA Stadsarchief Amsterdam VOC Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie WIC West-Indische Compagnie Note on currency The Dutch currency, the guilder (ƒ), was divided into 20 stuivers; each stuiver was sub- divided into 16 penningen. In addition to guilders, the Dutch also used pounds Flemish (pVl). The nominal value of VOC shares was, for example, often expressed in pounds Flemish. One pound Flemish equaled six guilders. To make currency figures more easily comprehensible, I have converted everything into guilders divided into 100 cents. IX INTRODUCTION ‘This little game could bring in more money than contracting charter parties for ships bound for England’, wrote Rodrigo Dias Henriques to Manuel Levy Duarte on 1 No- vember 1691.1 Dias Henriques was referring to the ‘game’ of trading shares of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC, founded 1602) and its derivatives* on the Amsterdam securities market. He acted as exchange agent for Levy Duarte and performed a high number of transactions on his account. The most notable feature of the exchange dealings of these Portuguese Jewish mer- chants was that they consisted solely of very swift trades; Dias Henriques made sure to always settle the transactions within a few days or a fortnight at most. He actively speculated on short-term share price* movements, while at the same time making sure that his portfolio did not become too risky – and, judging by his quote, he was rather good at it. Dias Henriques could perform these swift dealings because by the end of the seventeenth century, a very active secondary market* for securities existed in Am- sterdam. Modern securities markets have two functions: price discovery* and the provi- sion of liquidity*. The interaction of traders in the marketplace, in other words, de- termines the price of the assets that are traded on the market. The liquidity function means that as a result of the concentration of traders in the marketplace, traders can easily buy or sell assets. Straightforward as these market functions may seem, they play a very important role for investors: they allow investors to reallocate their asset hold- ings at low cost, enabling them to manage their financial risks according to their per- sonal preferences.2 Securities markets thus provide major advantages to investors. The secondary market for VOC shares became the first securities market in his- tory that provided these advantages to investors. Hence it was in seventeenth-century Amsterdam that ‘the global securities market began to take on its modern form’.3 Us- ing hitherto unexplored source material from the archives of the VOC, judicial institu- tions of the Dutch Republic and merchants who were active on the securities market, 1 Dias Henriques to Levy Duarte, 1 November 1691, SAA, PIG, inv.
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