Bells sound. Lighted messages appear. Men and women work at computers. They talk on the telephone. At times they shout and run around.

This noisy place is a stock exchange . Here expert salespeople called brokers buy and sell shares of companies.

The shares are known as stocks . People who own stock in a company, own part of that company.

People pay brokers to buy and sell stocks for them. If a company earns money, its stock increases in value.

If the company does not earn money, the stock decreases in value.

Brokers and investors carefully watch for any changes on the Big Board.

That is the name given to a list of stocks sold on the New York Stock Exchange .

The first written use of the word with that meaning was in a newspaper in Illinois in eighteen thirty-seven.