You had surely heard this city's name before,
Gotham, the Big Apple, the World Capital, financial center, trade center, entertainment and cultural center, the largest city on the North American continent!
—New York.
Situated along the Atlantic Ocean on the southeastern coast of New York State, it had five boroughs, fifty-nine districts, and an area exceeding 1,200 square kilometers.
Even compared to vast London, it was not inferior by much.
From its discovery during the colonial era, through the Declaration of Independence and the opportunities brought by great wars, as the nation it belonged to rose to global hegemony,
New York had, without the slightest exaggeration, become the world's foremost city.
Ranked first in the world!
Economy, politics, finance, media, education, entertainment—even fashion. Countless factors had forged it into the world's largest metropolitan area,
drawing who knew how many people here with dreams in their hearts, to this pinnacle full of opportunity and danger,
in search of its countless splendors.
And among all those "splendors," within the entire economic system of society, the most famous and most exalted one was
—"financial trading"!
Just as everyone who knew America knew New York, everyone who understood New York knew one name as well,
the place that served as the nerve center of international finance, more notorious for risk than even Las Vegas casinos,
Wall Street.
Located in the southern part of Manhattan—one of New York's five boroughs—it stretched from Broadway to the East River, only one-third of a mile long and just eleven meters wide.
Yet on that narrow, short street had once been gathered the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, trust companies, and the New York Futures Exchange,
as well as the headquarters of banks, insurance companies, railroads, shipping companies, and other major corporations established by every sort