how it originated
who started it

I think this will be a short story...

Sounds like someone needs help with their homework ;)

and their punctuation... :lol:

The stock market was originally where mediaeval villagers would go to buy stock to make good vegetable soup. Stock was actually invented by Lord Dauncey Pimlico-Stock, from whom we also get the expression "of good stock".
Since the only thing villagers could afford to eat was in fact vegetable soup (or a stew variant) it became recognised amongst the nobility that buying up stock was a good way of making a further profit. In time, buying anything in terms of anticipating future demand became known as 'buying stock'.
In a Liverpudlian version of the same tale, it is said that the name derives from the sort of stocks used to put criminals in, 'in express purpose for ye sundrie hurlinges of ye excremente' (as noted by Samuel Pepys).
;)