Visualizing 200 Years of U.S. Stock Market Sectors

If you could travel back in time to the 19th century, it would be very difficult to convince anyone that railroad investments were not the future of the stock market.

Governments were offering subsidies and land grants to stimulate rapid industry growth – and in the period of 1868-1873, just after the American Civil War, an astonishing 33,000 miles of new railroad track were laid.

Entrepreneurs and financiers started betting on ambitious enterprises like the Northern Pacific Railway – and as the transportation boom raged on, more than 60% of total U.S. stock market capitalization came from railroad related stocks.