First time hearing about Fintech?

When you see the word Fintech, what do you think of? Blockchain? Big data? AI? P2P? Make sure you stay in tune, in the our next two issues I will take you through the indestructible bond between finance and technology. Although the term Fin-tech has only gained major popularity and recognition in recent years, the finance industry is naturally equipped to integrate with the most forward technology. Since the financial market made its appearance in history, the industry has always harmonised and the absorbed the most advanced solutions.

Let us travel back in time to 1792. May 17 marked the signing of the famous "Buttonwood Agreement" under the phoenix tree outside Gate 68, Wall Street, New York USA. The agreement binding 24 stockbrokers, laid the foundation for the world's largest stock exchange and on March 8,1817, they were officially known as the New York Stock Exchange. Stock trading back then was not like today where you can trade and monitor everything electronically, rather, more like today's markets. You have people shouting in the foyer and traders in their seats calling to trade stocks. The minor investors were simply not eligible to enter the venue and trade. At the time, the largest stock exchange in the United States was not the New York Stock Exchange, but the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. In order to maintain timely statistics and data between the 2 venues, a semaphore station was set up between Philadelphia and Wall Street and every 6- 8 miles, a flagman stood to pass on stock performance fluctuations to the next man; think of it as Chinese Whispers. Each game of Chinese Whispers from Philadelphia to Wall Street took 30 minutes. This was the earliest trading mode seen in stock exchanges.

With the advancement of technology, telephone gradually replaced telegraph and with the progressive utilisation of computers and the internet, more precise trading mechanisms were established. In 1971, telephone lines connected all traders' computers globally and since then the world's first entirely electronically powered digital stock exchange market, The Nasdaq Stock Market began operating. This milestone breakthrough spurred a gust of enthusiasm and interest for high tech and the eruption of internet, paving a foundation for vast number of innovative startup companies at the time such as Microsoft, Intel and Facebook to be listed and publicised. At the same time, impelled the eagerness of investors around the world to invest in tech companies and global interconnections truly enabled all size trades to obtain information equality. The cost of information dissemination has been greatly reduced and become exceedingly timely.