The Amsterdam stock exchange (now part of the Euronext exchange) first listed shares in 1602. The first stock to be traded was the Dutch East India Company, a multinational mega-corporation granted a monopoly by the Dutch government to conduct trade with Asia. The company operated for almost two centuries, paying out an 18% annual dividend for almost the entire period.1
To give you a sense of just how large this company was, compare these publicly traded companies' peak market caps (converted to USD and adjusted for inflation.)2
1 Investinganswers.com, September 4 2012
2 Business Insider and Zero Hedge, February 2015
