In this long essay, I aim to map the role of the London Stock Exchange (more broadly the City of London) in the way that London has developed in the last 200 years to constitute its positioning as one of the most influential global cities of the day. The analysis will show that the impact of the Stock Exchange is a result of external factors facilitating its involvement. This suggests that London’s positioning as a global city is a consequence of political, cultural and technology developments that were then capitalised upon by the City of London. In turn, it shall be argued that the London Stock Exchange is a necessary factor for increased globalisation in London, but not a point of origin, thus diminishing its credentials. The periods of analysis will be from 1844, when the Joint Stock Companies Act encouraged stock ownership to 1870; 1870-1914, a period noted by Niall Ferguson as being a period of extensive globalisation; 1914-1979, which marked a lull in the London as a global city, with increased competition emerging across the world; and finally, 1979-present, when the neoliberal regime took over. Through this, the essay will argue that despite the City’s influence being vital in the development of London’s globality, it is predominantly subjugated to external influences that grant it its influence, with the Stock Market merely thriving where external factors granted it to. Thus, the London Stock Market is a consequence, not a cause of London’s globality. Within each time frame, I shall break it into three sections, one brief paragraph laying out the context of the era, and how globalisation changed; a paragraph outlining how external factors to the London Stock Exchange made London more global; and then another paragraph explaining how the London Stock Exchange capitalised on these factors to facilitate their full impact. Within this, I shall aim to show how the City of London’s uniqueness is a result of external factors that constructed a landscape to perform upon, whilst other stock markets around the world have unique positions because of their own separate histories. This will feed into the narrative that finance is not a primary cause of city’s becoming global, but in fact they follow in the path of technological, political and cultural factors.