Playing the Market - Retail Investment and Speculation in Twentieth-Century Britain

This book explores the distinctively British obsession with investment and speculation. It explains how and why everyday British people increasingly invested, speculated, and gambled in stocks and shares from the outbreak of World War I, over the postwar decades and the Thatcher years, up until the premiership of Tony Blair.

List of contents

• Introduction


• 1: Bucket Shops and Outside Brokers


• 2: The Stock Market Game in Postwar Britain


• 3: The Financial Press and the Investing Public


• 4: The Politics of Wider Share Ownership


• 5: The Profit Motive: Inflation and Private Investment in the 1970s


• 6: Popular Capitalism?


• Bibliography

About the author

Kieran Heinemann read History in Berlin and Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD in 2017. He now lives and works in Stockholm. His articles have been published in Twentieth Century British History, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, and Archiv für Sozialgeschichte.

Summary

This book explores the distinctively British obsession with investment and speculation. It explains how and why everyday British people increasingly invested, speculated, and gambled in stocks and shares from the outbreak of World War I, over the postwar decades and the Thatcher years, up until the premiership of Tony Blair.

Additional text

Playing the Market is an important book. Well researched, persuasively argued, and highly accessible, it encourages us to rethink the nature of capitalism as well as orthodox narratives of modern Britain. It deserves to win a wide readership of social, cultural and economic historians.

Product details

• Authors: Kieran Heinemann, Kieran (Independent Scholar Heinemann
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 22.06.2021
• EAN: 9780198864257
• ISBN: 978-0-19-886425-7
• No. of pages: 288
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; Business & Economics / Investments & Securities / Stocks, European History, Finance, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic Conditions, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, 20th Century, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Economic history, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Economic & financial crises & disasters, Economic and financial crises and disasters, Investment and securities, Stocks & Shares, Finance and the finance industry