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Stump the Street.
One sharp market question a day. Wall Street history, jargon decoded, and the stories behind the money. Free, in five minutes. No advice. No hype.
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All issues →Jul 26, 2026
Wall Street's $2.7 billion spelling mistake
E.F. Hutton's check-printing error was discovered only when a sharp-eyed recipient called to ask if the windfall was real; the firm spent six weeks politely…
Jul 25, 2026
The railroad that accidentally invented junk bonds
Penn Central's collapse left investors holding $82 million in suddenly worthless commercial paper—forcing money market funds to invent an entirely new asset…
Jul 24, 2026
the invoice that launched a $6 billion empire
Langone's 1981 Home Depot IPO allocated shares to every store employee at the offering price—a radical move that created hundreds of millionaires from the…
Jul 23, 2026
The Wall Street fortune built on a single adjective
By calling his brake "universal"—meaning it worked on any railcar configuration—Westinghouse secured not just a device patent but effective control of an…
Jul 22, 2026
Three letters that cost investors $440 million
The typist entered earnings of 1¢ per share instead of $1.01—a decimal-point error that triggered automated sell programs across Wall Street, erasing $440…
Jul 21, 2026
How a rounding error created a $10 billion panic
The DTC discovered the error only after brokers began calling to ask why their clients' portfolios had mysteriously gained shares overnight—some accounts…
Jul 20, 2026
The check that sat on a desk for 10 months
The famous $24 figure comes from a single 1846 letter by a town clerk doing rough conversion math—no contemporary Dutch records survive, and modern historians…
Jul 19, 2026
The trading floor that wasn't supposed to exist
The New York Curb Exchange (later AMEX) continued trading outdoors on Broad Street through the Depression while the SEC debated whether to shut it down—brokers…