Passage 2
Security and commodity exchanges are trading posts where people meet who wish to buy and sell. The exchange themselves do no trading, they merely provide a place where prospective buyers and sellers can meet and conduct their business.

Wall Street, although the best known, is not home of exchanges in the United States. There are the cotton exchanges in New Orleans and Chicago; the Mercantile Exchange which deals in many farm products in Chicago; and grain exchanges in many of the large cities of the Midwest. Some exchanges, like Chicago Broad of Trade, provide market services for several kinds of products. These trading posts where products may be brought or sold are called commodity exchanges.

The security exchanges, on the other hand, are meeting places where stocks and bonds are traded. Like the commodity exchanges, they help serve the economic life of the country. But when their operations get out of hand, they may become very dangerous. In 1929, the security exchange, or stock market, contributed to a crash—a sudden sharp decline in the value of securities. Many people lost fortunes, many corporations were bankrupted; many workers lost their jobs.

Today, however, investing through security exchanges and trading on commodity exchanges has been made safer by regulations set up by the exchanges themselves and by regulations of the United States government.

47. Security and Commodity exchanges are meeting places for buyer and sellers of stocks.