1688 - The earliest known book on the stock market, Joseph Penso de la Vega’s Confusion de Confusiones (Confusion of Confusions), appears. His anecdotes of the Amsterdam stock exchange read like modern Maalox moments: “When speculators talk, they talk shares...when they look at something, it is shares they see...if they eat, the shares are their food...and even on the death bed, their last worries are the shares.... The speculator fights his own good sense, struggles against his own good will, counteracts his own hope, acts against his own comfort, and is at odds with his own decisions.”