By the eighteenth century, the market of Amsterdam retained an assured presence among the financial centres of Europe. Such recognition points to structures which were patently complex, often staid, yet at the same time capable of remarkable innovations as the projects of Abraham van Ketwich amply demonstrated. This vitality had no little import for risk-spreading since insurance was not set in a market apart. The same names bobbed up as occasion offered under the guise of underwriters, shippers, bill-brokers, warehouse-agents, entrepreneurs for loans both at home and abroad – in short, of dealers in the market. But as net risk capital looked more to short-term investment, many of these opportunities advanced together and so responded to changes both specialised and versatile. Rises and falls – as in other financial centres, more often in close conjunction with them – conformed to the modulation of economic environment. As a world market Amsterdam received the imprint of wide and intricate pressures, shocks both domestic and international, which touched all levels of its activity and disrupted its functions. Our purpose here is to consider some of these random elements in the sense that they came outside the immediate scope of insurance, and belonged implicitly as much to the uncertainties in good years as those in bad times.