Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of New York City. It runs crosstown between Broadway on the west to South Street, at the East River, on the east. The term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry, or New York–based financial interests.New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world. It is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange, located on Wall Street, and NASDAQ. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange.