It turns half a century of life precisely today the Nasdaq, the index of technology stocks of the American Stock Exchange. Founded in New York on February 4, 1971, it officially debuted on the market four days later, on Monday February 8: the headquarters are in Time Square, in the financial heart of the Big Apple, and the chosen name, Nasdaq, is nothing more than an acronym Of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (lit. "National association of operators in securities with automated listing"). It is also the first example in the world of a completely electronic stock market, ie a market made up of communications via computer. Originally the computers were only used to disseminate price information on a continuous basis and not to connect the operators: the passage of orders, until 1987, in fact took place via telephone. There fully telematic transmission also of the orders was established at the end of 1987.
Started 50 years ago with an initial value of 100 points, the Nasdaq reached an all-time high of 5.132 points on March 10, 2000, in the midst of the boom in the New economy, before the subsequent bursting of the dot-com speculative bubble, to then go back up and break through last summer, after the spring collapse due to Covid, 10.000 points. In almost constant ascent since then, today the index travels on 13.560 points (updated at the start of the session on Friday 5 February 2020), its highest ever. And it could not be otherwise, given the continuous records of the titles that compose it: in fact, this list includes the most capitalized companies in the world, from Microsoft to Amazon, from Apple to Google (Alphabet), from Facebook to Yahoo, without forgetting IBM, Cisco, Tesla, Intel, Netflix, eBay, just to name a few of the most popular brands in no particular order.
