Chapter 464

The bitter north wind was howling in winter, but it could not dampen the fervor of the Tianjing Stock Exchange. From the day it opened, it had been flooded with a constant stream of people for five straight days. While a share price of a few taels of silver was beyond the reach of ordinary people in other parts of the Great Xia, it was a price that most could afford here in Tianjing. In this era, common households did not have the habit of depositing silver in banks; they saved it as a nest egg for emergencies. Now, the frenzy of the stock exchange—even by attracting only one-tenth of the savings of ordinary Tianjing residents—pushed the already manic market to new heights. Most famous was the Train Chamber of Commerce, whose shares had soared from an issue price of one tael to eight taels per share. Everyone expected it to break through the ten-tael mark within a day or two, bringing the total value of the entire Train Chamber of Commerce to twenty million taels of silver.