The trading of capital assets in İstanbul, which has begun in the second half of the 19^th century with the trading of debt securities among Galata merchants in the process of transitioning into a financial bourgeoisie, continues today under the roof of the modern Borsa İstanbul campus in Sarıyer, İstinye. This study discusses the evolution of capital asset trading activity in Istanbul from the late Ottoman period to the present day in the light of socioeconomic developments and events that have affected the economy. In this process, the exchange survived three moratoriums (1875, 1895 and 1958), two world wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945), and more than a dozen economic crises and managed to emerge stronger from the bottlenecks experienced. Our modern stock exchange started its operations in its Cağaloğlu building with only 19 listed shares under the name of Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) on January 3, 1986, and merged with the Futures and Options Exchange and the Istanbul Gold Exchange on April 3, 2013, under the name of Borsa İstanbul (BIST). With 501 listed shares, a total market capitalization exceeding 1 trillion Turkish liras, and a monthly trading volume in excess of 100 million lots, BIST globally ranks thirty-seventh in terms of its market capitalization and first in terms of its average share turnover today.