7 bizarre ways the stock market was completely different in 1929 compared to today
The stock market has changed a lot since the infamous crash of 1929.
Some of the differences are highlighted in “1929,” a new book by Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Read Business Insider’s recent profile of Sorkin here.
When you see the famous photos from outside the New York Stock Exchange in 1929, it looks like a different world.
For one, why are there so many people there? If you visit the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street today, even during volatile periods in the market, it’s a pretty tame setting.
The reason for the stark difference between then and now is simply the availability of information. That is, it’s a lot easier to come by today. In 1929, information was often already old even on the NYSE floor itself, let alone at brokerages around the city, according to Andrew Ross Sorkin, the CNBC host who recently published “1929,” which examines the infamous stock-market meltdown.
“The reason there were so many people in the streets is people had gone down there physically because they wanted to see what was actually happening to their investments,” Sorkin said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast. “Because you couldn’t call somebody, there was no app to look at.”
It’s one example of how much the world and the stock market have changed in the last 96 years.
In his book, Sorkin mentions a number of ways in which the market landscape was different in the years leading up to the crash and the subsequent Great Depression.
Here are seven big differences.
Women were not allowed on the trading floor
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Women weren’t allowed on the NYSE floor until 1943, during World War II, when there was a shortage of workers. The first women to work on the floor were “quote girls” and “carrier pages.” The New York Times wrote a story about it at the time.
“It is impossible to ignore that this was a world shaped almost entirely by men,” Sorkin writes about the early 20th century, leading up to the crash.
“Women were neither welcomed on the trading floor nor permitted to shape its rules,” he added.
Today, women lead the entire exchange. The NYSE has had two women presidents since 2018: Stacey Cunningham and its current president, Lynn Martin.
You could pay actors to bid up a stock on the exchange floor
Brad Barket/Getty Images
OK, they weren’t actors as famous as Jeremy Renner and Robert Downey Jr.
But, really, it was perfectly legal to pay people posing as traders.
“In the book, you’ll see there’s a guy named Mike Meehan who’s the specialist on the floor for RCA. He used to run these effectively insider trading rings where he would get a bunch of wealthy guys together and say, ‘We’re going to paint the tape, we’re going to put some stories out saying the stock is going to go up,'” Sorkin told Business Insider.
He continued: “And then you would literally have the equivalent of almost like actors on the floor of the exchange saying, ‘I’m buying for 120, I’m buying for 140,’ and they all knew exactly how high it was going to go, and then they knew when they were going to pull the rug.”
There were brokerages throughout the city
Actress Irene Bordini with WD Hutton at one of Hutton & Co.’s brokerage offices.Underwood Archives/Getty Images
No, there weren’t Robinhood or Schwab mobile apps back then. Many people would buy stocks in person.
This meant that there were physical brokerage locations sprinkled throughout New York City.
“Prohibition was happening, so all the bars were closed, and the national pastime had become speculating, and there were literally brokerages on the corners of streets like they’re a Starbucks now,” Sorkin said.
You could trade on margin easily
Getty Images
Today, retail investors can trade on margin within reason. One guardrail is that if you want to borrow money to buy stocks, you need to have at least 50% of the purchase amount deposited in your account.
In 1929, people would regularly trade on 10x margin.
“By the thousands, middle class Americans opened margin accounts, putting up 10 or 20 percent of a stock purchase and borrowing the rest,” Sorkin writes in the book. “When the market went up, the returns felt like free money.”
No financial statements like 10-Ks
A monitor displays stock market information at the New York Stock Exchange on October 30, 2025 in New York.ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Markets were also much less transparent than they are today, as public companies did not have to issue financial statements like prospectuses and 10-Ks.
“Somebody said to me the other day, ‘So did you ever get to, when you were doing your research, did you ever read the prospectuses of these stocks?” Sorkin told BI. “I said, ‘Prospectuses? They were like leaflets, if there was anything, that they would hand out on the street, literally.”
There was no SEC
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
All of this sounds pretty shocking until you realize there was no Securities and Exchange Commission yet. That would come after the crash, with the top dog financial regulator established in 1934. The government agency is tasked with ensuring a fair market, protecting investors, and going after financial criminals.
“There were no rules,” Sorkin said.
There was a famous stock market astrologer
Evangeline AdamsGetty Images
Evangeline Adams had become a well-known stock-market astrologer, putting out a newsletter that supposedly had 100,000 subscribers, Sorkin says in “1929.” Adams would also give personalized stock recommendation sections for a fee of $50.
“Even J. Piermont Morgan was said to have consulted her for advice,” Sorkin writes.
OK, maybe this isn’t all that hard to imagine — there’s got to be a TikTok account out there doing something similar.
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