WALL STREET, THE WORLD'S LARGEST STOCK EXCHANGE

Today, The Grandma has visited Wall Street to invest and know more things about the finantial market.

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. 

It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east.

The term Wall Street has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry, New York–based financial interests, or the Financial District itself.

Wall Street was originally known in Dutch as de Waalstraat when it was part of New Amsterdam in the 17th century, though the origins of the name vary. An actual wall existed on the street from 1685 to 1699. 

During the 17th century, Wall Street was a slave trading marketplace and a securities trading site, as well as the location of Federal Hall, New York's first city hall.

In the early 19th century, both residences and businesses occupied the area, but increasingly business predominated, and New York City's financial industry became centered on Wall Street. In the 20th century, several early skyscrapers were built on Wall Street, including 40 Wall Street, once the world's tallest building.

The Wall Street area is home to the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest stock exchange by total market capitalization, as well as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and many commercial banks and insurance companies. 

Several other stock and commodity exchanges have also been located in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street, including the New York Mercantile Exchange and other commodity futures exchanges, and the American Stock Exchange. To support the business they did on the exchanges, many brokerage firms had offices nearby. However the direct economic impacts of Wall Street activities extend worldwide.

Wall Street itself is a narrow winding street running from the East River to Broadway and lined with skyskrapers, as well as the New York Stock Exchange Building and Federal Hall National Memorial and One Wall Street at its western end. The street is nearby multiple subway lines and ferry terminals and the World Trade Center (1973–2001) site.

More information: The Street

Wall Street is a 1987 American drama film, directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, which stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, and Martin Sheen.

The film tells the story of Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), a young stockbroker who becomes involved with Gordon Gekko (Douglas), a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider.

Stone made the film as a tribute to his father, Lou Stone, a stockbroker during the Great Depression. The character of Gekko is said to be a composite of several people, including Dennis Levine, Ivan Boesky, Carl Icahn, Asher Edelman, Michael Milken, and Stone himself. The character of Sir Lawrence Wildman, meanwhile, was modelled on the prominent British financier and corporate raider Sir James Goldsmith. Originally, the studio wanted Warren Beatty to play Gekko, but he was not interested; Stone, meanwhile, wanted Richard Gere, but Gere passed on the role.

The film was well received among major film critics. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the film has come to be seen as the archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess, with Douglas' character declaring that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. 

It has also proven influential in inspiring people to work on Wall Street, with Sheen, Douglas, and Stone commenting over the years how people still approach them and say that they became stockbrokers because of their respective characters in the film.

Stone and Douglas reunited for a sequel titled Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which was released theatrically on September 24, 2010. 

More information: Roger Ebert

Wall Street is the only place that people
ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice
from those who take the subway.

Warren Buffett