160 Fun Facts About Finance

Roughly how many shares traded on 'Black Tuesday', 29 October 1929, the worst day of the crash?

Five days earlier, Black Thursday had set the previous record of 12.9 million shares.

Before the 1929 crash, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had risen roughly how much over a nine-year run?

It peaked at 381.17 on September 3, 1929, a level it would not see again until 1954.

Which flower was at the centre of what is generally called the first recorded speculative bubble?

The Dutch mania peaked in the winter of 1636-37, when a single rare bulb could fetch more than ten times a skilled artisan's annual income.

In what year did the Dutch tulip market dramatically collapse?

The most expensive bulb of the mania, the Semper Augustus, had sold for 10,000 guilders, roughly the price of a grand canal house.

On Black Monday, 19 October 1987, the Dow Jones fell by roughly what percentage in a single day?

The 508-point drop remains the largest one-day percentage fall in the index's history.

Which investment bank's bankruptcy on 15 September 2008 became the defining moment of the financial crisis?

The firm had been in business for 158 years, having started as a dry-goods store in Montgomery, Alabama.

The 158-year-old firm that collapsed in September 2008 began as a dry-goods store in which US state?

Bavarian immigrant Henry Lehman opened the shop in Montgomery in 1844; his brothers followed and the name changed to Lehman Brothers in 1850.

Which US investment bank was sold to JPMorgan Chase in a Fed-backed 'fire sale' in March 2008?

It was then the fifth-largest US investment bank; the initial offer was just $2 a share.

How large was the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that Congress authorised in October 2008?

Only one US banker went to jail as a result of the crisis: Kareem Serageldin of Credit Suisse.

Which British company's 1720 'Bubble' gave its name to a famous Act of Parliament?

The company had lobbied for the Bubble Act itself, which banned rival joint-stock companies without a royal charter.

In the Weimar Republic hyperinflation of 1923, roughly how many marks did one US dollar buy by November?

A loaf of bread in Berlin went from about 160 marks at the end of 1922 to 200 billion marks a year later.

What temporary currency, backed by mortgage bonds, ended Germany's 1923 hyperinflation?

It was later replaced by the Reichsmark, and the central bank was barred from printing further paper money.

The January 2021 GameStop short squeeze was driven mainly by which online community?

Several hedge funds that were short the stock took heavy losses, and Robinhood briefly halted buying on January 28.

The Enron scandal dissolved which accounting firm, then among the world's five largest?

The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in reaction to Enron and WorldCom, tightening rules on corporate boards and auditors.

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the largest known in history, was worth an estimated how much?

He was arrested on 11 December 2008 and sentenced to 150 years, the maximum allowed.

Charles Ponzi's 1920 scheme claimed to profit from arbitrage in what?

He promised a 50% return in 45 days; the coupons let someone abroad prepay a correspondent's return postage.

What prison sentence did Bernie Madoff receive in June 2009?

The court-appointed trustee has since recovered and returned more than $14 billion of investors' actual losses.

Warren Buffett was born and built Berkshire Hathaway in which US city?

Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting there draws tens of thousands and is nicknamed the 'Woodstock of Capitalism'.

Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's holding company, was originally a manufacturer of what?

Buffett started buying the shares in 1962 at $7.50 apiece; the class A stock passed $700,000 in 2024 because the board refuses to split it.

Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 with which couple?

Mark Zuckerberg was among the early signatories that December.

Michael Burry, the investor played by Christian Bale in 'The Big Short', trained professionally as what?

He earned an MD from Vanderbilt in 1997 before starting the hedge fund Scion Capital with family loans and an inheritance.

Jack Bogle, who launched the first public index fund, founded which firm in 1974?

Critics dubbed his passive fund 'Bogle's Folly' and called it un-American; it now tracks the S&P 500 as the Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

Isaac Newton spent the last three decades of his life running which British institution?

He estimated that a fifth of the coins handed in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit.

The US Federal Reserve System was created by an Act signed in which year?

It came after a string of financial panics; twelve regional Reserve Banks oversee privately owned commercial banks.

How many regional Federal Reserve Banks are there in the United States?

Congress gave the Fed three goals: maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.

Which country has the world's oldest central bank, founded in 1668?

The Bank of England followed in 1694 and is the second oldest; it remained privately owned until 1946.

The Bank of England's nickname 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street' comes from what?

James Gillray drew it in 1797; the bank has stood on Threadneedle Street since 1734.

The Medici Bank, the largest and most respected bank in 15th-century Europe, was based in which city?

Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici founded it in 1397; the family's wealth turned into political control of the Florentine Republic under Cosimo the Elder.

The FDIC, which insures US bank deposits, was created by legislation passed in which year?

It says no depositor has ever lost a penny of insured funds; the limit has been $250,000 per ownership category since Dodd-Frank in 2010.

Dodd-Frank (2010) made permanent what FDIC insurance cap per ownership category?

The cap was raised from $100,000 during the 2008 crisis and made permanent by the Dodd-Frank Act.

In which US state did 44 Allied nations agree the post-war monetary system in 1944?

The Bretton Woods conference at the Mount Washington Hotel also created the IMF and the body that became the World Bank.

The New York Stock Exchange traces its origins to an agreement signed by 24 brokers in 1792 under what?

The Buttonwood Agreement set a floor commission rate and bound the signers to deal with one another first.

How many companies make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

It debuted in 1896 with 12 industrial stocks at a value of 40.94, and is still price-weighted rather than weighted by company size.

At what value did the Dow Jones Industrial Average debut on 26 May 1896?

Charles Dow's first average, in 1884, tracked 11 mostly railroad stocks and evolved into the Transportation Average.

The S&P index was expanded to its current 500 companies and given its present name in which year?

Standard Statistics had computed a weekly index of 233 companies as far back as 1923.

Which stock market began operations on 8 February 1971 as the world's first fully electronic exchange?

For its first 13 years it was only a quotation system; trades were still executed by telephone until 1984.

The world's oldest 'modern' securities market was created in 1602 to trade shares of which company?

The Amsterdam exchange grew up as a secondary market for VOC shares; Joseph de la Vega's 1688 book 'Confusion of Confusions' described how it worked.

The Nikkei 225 tracks companies listed on the stock exchange of which city?

Like the Dow, it is price-weighted, and its 225 components are reviewed twice a year.

Which UK stock index, informally called the 'Footsie', started life on 3 January 1984?

The London Stock Exchange nearly named it the 'SE 100', cutting out the Financial Times, which had not helped build it.

'Bull' and 'bear' market terms originated in the early 18th century in which London location?

Short sellers were called 'bear-skin jobbers' because they sold the bear's skin before catching the bear.

In December of which year did its sculptor illegally drop the Charging Bull outside the NYSE?

Arturo Di Modica made the 7,100-pound bronze after the 1987 crash; police removed it and it was reinstalled at Bowling Green six days later.

Before it was Wall Street, the Dutch of New Amsterdam called the street 'Het Cingel', meaning what?

It was also the name of the outer barrier street, wall and canal of Amsterdam itself.

On 15 August 1971, US President Richard Nixon ended the dollar's direct convertibility into what?

Under Bretton Woods the dollar had been fixed at $35 an ounce; the 'Nixon shock' effectively made it a fiat currency.

In which year did Newton's mispricing of silver against gold put Britain onto a de facto gold standard?

Silver coins went out of circulation as a result, and the world's leading commercial power stayed on gold for two centuries.

Euro coins and banknotes first entered physical circulation on 1 January of which year?

The euro had already existed as an accounting currency since 1999, replacing the ECU one-for-one.

The largest US banknote ever printed, the $100,000 bill, carried the portrait of which president?

Issued only as a 1934 gold certificate for transfers between Federal Reserve banks, it never circulated publicly and is illegal to own.

US 'greenbacks' are named after Demand Notes created by which president to fund the Civil War?

The 1860s notes were printed black and green on the back, and the colour stuck.

The US cent design with a president's profile on the front was introduced in which year?

It marked the centennial of the president's birth; the memorial reverse ran from 1959 to 2008 before the Union Shield arrived in 2010.

According to Herodotus, which ancient people were the first to use gold and silver coins?

Their earliest coins were electrum, a natural gold-silver alloy from Anatolia's rivers.

Paper money was first used in China during which dynasty?

The notes, called jiaozi, evolved from 7th-century promissory notes; Marco Polo devoted a chapter to the idea.

The word 'salary' derives from the Latin 'salarium', which is connected to what commodity?

One theory is that Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in it, or paid to guard the Via Salaria, the salt road into Rome.

The word 'mortgage' comes from a Law French term meaning what?

The pledge 'dies' either when the loan is repaid or when the property is foreclosed.

The earliest known pig-shaped money boxes, dating to the 12th century, were made on which island?

Boar-shaped banks have been dug up in large numbers around Trowulan, thought to be the capital of the Majapahit Empire.

The Bitcoin white paper was posted to a cryptography mailing list on 31 October of which year?

The pseudonymous author Satoshi Nakamoto has never been identified; the total supply is capped at 21 million coins.

How many bitcoins did Laszlo Hanyecz pay for two pizzas in the first commercial bitcoin deal?

The 22 May 2010 purchase is celebrated annually as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

The world's first cash machine was installed in June 1967 at which bank's Enfield branch?

It beat a Swedish rival by nine days; customers fed in paper vouchers marked with carbon-14 rather than plastic cards.

Which card, launched in 1950 by Frank McNamara and Ralph Schneider, was the first general-purpose charge card?

The whole bill had to be paid each month; American Express followed in 1958 with a worldwide network.

Bank of America launched the BankAmericard, the first successful modern credit card, in 1958 in which city?

The bank mailed 60,000 residents a card at once because 45% of the city already banked with it; the licensees rebranded as Visa in 1976.

The BankAmericard licensees unified under which single brand name in 1976?

Dee Hock, Visa's first CEO, had computerised the system in 1973 to cut transaction times.

The 401(k) retirement plan takes its name from what?

Section 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code was enacted on 6 November 1978; benefits consultant Ted Benna set up one of the first plans at his own firm.

The Roth IRA is named after a US senator from which state?

William Roth sponsored the account in the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997; it was originally proposed as the 'IRA Plus'.

The 'rule of 72' is a mental shortcut for estimating what?

Divide 72 by the annual interest rate; 69.3 is more accurate for continuous compounding, but 72 divides more easily.

The Bank of England pioneered the first pre-printed cheque form in which year?

One of the earliest surviving handwritten cheques, drawn on London scriveners Morris and Clayton, dates from 16 February 1659.

The most widely used US credit score, the FICO score, is produced by a company formerly known as what?

The score is designed to run from 300 to 850; some Canadian bureau scores stretch to 900.

In which 1946 film does George Bailey talk depositors out of withdrawing their savings during a bank run?

Institutions built during the Depression have prevented runs on US commercial banks ever since, even through the 1980s savings-and-loan crisis.

Banknotes were first issued in Europe by Stockholms Banco in which year?

The Swedish bank folded soon after over-issuing notes; the country's Riksbank, founded in 1668, is the world's oldest central bank.

In which year was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, tightening US corporate reporting after Enron and WorldCom, enacted?

Its 11 sections added criminal penalties for executives who certify false financial statements.

Interest earned on both the principal and earlier accumulated interest is called what?

Simple interest, by contrast, never adds earlier interest to the principal.

The periodic interest payment made to a bondholder is known by what name?

The name survives from the days when paper bonds carried detachable coupons to be clipped and redeemed.

Profits a corporation keeps rather than paying out as dividends are known as what?

A corporation is usually barred from paying dividends out of its capital.

The process of a private company selling shares in an IPO is colloquially known as what?

In Britain the same step is often called 'floating' the company.

A stock's P/E ratio divides its price by which figure?

A P/E of 8 means a buyer is paying eight years' worth of current earnings for the share.

What distinguishes an ETF from a traditional mutual fund?

Most ETFs are index funds that passively track a stock or bond index.

Market capitalisation is calculated by multiplying a company's share price by what?

It measures only equity, ignoring debt; enterprise value is the fuller yardstick.

A short seller profits when the price of the borrowed asset does what?

The short seller must eventually buy the asset back to return it to the lender.

The fixed level at which an option holder may buy or sell the underlying asset is called what?

An option conveys the right, but not the obligation, to trade at that price.

Insider trading means trading a company's securities based on what kind of information?

In many jurisdictions the ban extends to brokers, associates and even family members of insiders.

Under which part of the US Bankruptcy Code does a business reorganise rather than liquidate?

In most cases the debtor stays in control of its business during the process.

In a pyramid scheme, participants earn money primarily by doing what?

Because recruitment must grow forever, most late joiners inevitably lose money.

Who coined the term 'dollar cost averaging' in the 1949 book The Intelligent Investor?

The idea is that a fixed sum buys more shares when prices are low and fewer when high.

The term 'blue chip' stock derives from which game?

In American tradition the blue chips are the highest-value ones on the table.

Dow Jones folklore credits which employee with coining 'blue chip' stock in the 1920s?

He noticed several trades at $200 or $250 a share go by on the ticker.

'Junk Bond King' Michael Milken ran the high-yield department of which firm?

His pay there topped $1 billion over four years, a US record at the time.

Which benchmark replaced US-dollar Libor when its final rates were published in June 2023?

SOFR stands for Secured Overnight Financing Rate.

Quantitative easing, widely used after 2008, was first pioneered in which country?

A central bank buys bonds and other assets to push down yields and expand the money supply.

The Glass–Steagall provisions of 1933 separated commercial banks from what kind of business?

The name honours sponsors Senator Carter Glass and Representative Henry Steagall.

The Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 created which new watchdog agency?

It also set up the Financial Stability Oversight Council to watch for systemic risk.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission was created by an Act passed in which year?

It was a direct response to the Wall Street crash of 1929.

The IMF, founded at Bretton Woods, is headquartered in which city?

It acts as a lender of last resort to members facing balance of payments crises.

Deloitte, EY and KPMG make up the Big Four accounting firms along with which firm?

Between them they audit the great majority of public companies.

Which hedge fund got a $3.6 billion bank bailout brokered by the New York Fed in 1998?

It had lost $4.6 billion in under four months through high leverage.

LTCM founder John Meriwether had previously headed bond trading at which bank?

Nobel laureates Myron Scholes and Robert Merton sat on LTCM's board.

By 1818, which London merchant bank was dubbed 'the sixth great European power'?

The other five were England, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia.

Rogue trader Nick Leeson served his prison sentence in which country?

He spent more than four years in Changi Prison.

Jérôme Kerviel's unauthorised trades cost which French bank about €4.9 billion in 2008?

He was convicted of breach of trust, forgery and misusing the bank's computers.

The Black–Scholes model gives a theoretical price for what kind of financial instrument?

It shows an option has a unique price given the security's risk and expected return.

Harry Markowitz won the 1990 Nobel in economics for pioneering what?

It studies how risk, return, correlation and diversification shape a portfolio's outcome.

Which Wall Street firm took a 12% stake in Bloomberg L.P. when it was co-founded in 1981?

Michael Bloomberg co-founded it with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan and Charles Zegar.

Dow Jones & Company had another co-founder besides Dow and Jones. Who was he?

Dow also co-founded The Wall Street Journal and devised the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The Wall Street Journal published its first issue in which year?

It has since won 39 Pulitzer Prizes.

The Panic of 1907 was triggered by a failed attempt to corner the stock of which company?

Banks that had lent to the cornering scheme suffered runs that spread across the system.

The Rothschild banking dynasty originated in which city?

The family name comes from a house built there in 1567.

Wells Fargo Bank designates which city as its main office, making it a South Dakota citizen?

It originates about one in four US home loans.

Amadeo Giannini founded which institution, the forerunner of today's BofA?

He was among the first bankers to serve middle-class customers, mainly Italian immigrants.

Lloyd's of London traces its origins to what kind of business run by Edward Lloyd c. 1689?

It began in marine insurance and is still not an insurance company but a marketplace.

Which company bought PayPal in 2002 for about $1.5 billion, then spun it off in 2015?

PayPal had gone public through an IPO earlier that same year.

M-Pesa, the mobile money service launched in 2007, began in which country?

It was launched by Vodafone and the mobile operator Safaricom.

In M-Pesa, 'pesa' is the word for money in which language?

The M stands for mobile.

By early 2014, Mt. Gox was handling roughly what share of all bitcoin transactions?

The Tokyo-based exchange abruptly ceased operations amid the loss of hundreds of thousands of bitcoin.

Crypto exchange FTX, which collapsed in 2022, was headquartered in which country?

It was incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda but run from Nassau.

As of 2021, Dogecoin was the sleeve sponsor of which English football club?

The joke coin peaked at a market value of over $85 billion in May 2021.

Which currency is the world's oldest still in continuous use?

It was the fourth-most-traded currency in the world in 2022.

The dollar sign is also known as the sign of which other currency?

The double-barred version is called cifrão in Portuguese.

The first United States Mint was created in 1792 in which city?

Today coins are struck in Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco and West Point.

Which US agency prints paper currency, as opposed to the Mint's coins?

They are the only two US agencies that manufacture physical money.

In which year did the Treasury build the Fort Knox bullion depository?

The aim was to move gold away from coastal cities vulnerable to attack.

Who was the first woman to chair the US Federal Reserve?

She later became the first woman to serve as US Treasury secretary too.

Alan Greenspan chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 until which year?

Ronald Reagan first nominated him; George W. Bush named Ben Bernanke his successor.

Who holds the record for the longest tenure as Fed chair, ahead of Alan Greenspan?

Greenspan's near-19-year run was the second longest.

Which institution has the exclusive right to authorise the issue of euro banknotes?

Member states may issue euro coins, but the volume must be approved first.

The Hungarian pengő, wrecked by the worst hyperinflation ever, was replaced in 1946 by what?

The pengő itself had replaced the korona only in 1927.

Which magazine has published the Big Mac Index since 1986?

It was introduced by Pam Woodall as a semi-humorous look at purchasing power parity.

The Laffer curve illustrates the relationship between tax rates and what?

It argues revenue is zero at both 0% and 100% tax, so a peak lies somewhere between.

John Maynard Keynes graduated from Cambridge in 1904 with a degree in which subject?

He is often called the father of macroeconomics.

Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was published in which year?

His earlier classic, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, appeared in 1759.

Peter Lynch famously ran which Fidelity fund from 1977 to 1990?

He averaged a 29.2% annual return and grew assets from $18 million to $14 billion.

Which of these investing terms was coined by Peter Lynch?

He also popularised the mantra 'invest in what you know'.

On Black Wednesday in 1992, the UK withdrew the pound from what?

The government had failed to keep sterling above the mechanism's lower limit.

George Soros's Black Wednesday short sale of pounds sterling was worth roughly how much?

The trade made him about $1 billion and the nickname 'the man who broke the Bank of England'.

Which quantitative hedge fund did mathematician Jim Simons found?

Its Medallion Fund's returns earned him the title of the most successful hedge fund manager ever.

The Nasdaq Composite rose by roughly what percentage between 1995 and its March 2000 peak?

It then fell 78% from the peak by October 2002, giving up every gain.

Pets.com, a famous dot-com casualty, was known for what advertising mascot?

It appeared in the 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving parade and a 2000 Super Bowl ad.

Since 2001, the Pets.com web address has redirected to which retailer's site?

The site lived only from November 1998 to November 2000.

Which savings and loan, seized in September 2008, is the largest bank failure in US history?

The FDIC sold its banking operations to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion.

Robinhood, the commission-free trading app, was founded in 2013 by Baiju Bhatt and whom?

The two Stanford classmates had built high-frequency trading platforms before.

A SPAC, a listed shell set up to take a private firm public, is also known as what?

The route requires fewer filings and offers fewer safeguards than a normal IPO.

Saudi Aramco's 2019 IPO, the world's largest, beat the 2014 record set by which company?

Aramco raised $25.6 billion.

Established in 1875, the oldest stock exchange in Asia is in which city?

It is also the tenth oldest in the world.

Germany's DAX index tracks how many major blue-chip companies?

It is Germany's benchmark blue-chip index.

The NYSE's Level 1 circuit breaker halts trading after a market drop of what size?

Levels 2 and 3 kick in at 13% and 20%.

Which venture capitalist coined the term 'unicorn' for a $1 billion startup in 2013?

She chose the mythical beast to convey how rare such companies are.

Sand Hill Road, running through Palo Alto and Menlo Park, is famous for its concentration of what?

The arterial road also passes through Woodside.

The 2016 Wells Fargo scandal involved employees creating millions of what?

Regulators including the CFPB fined the bank a combined $185 million.

How old was Elizabeth Holmes when she founded Theranos in 2003?

The blood-testing startup reached a $9 billion valuation at its 2013-14 peak.

Jordan Belfort, the real 'Wolf of Wall Street', founded which brokerage firm?

The firm's notoriety also inspired the film Boiler Room (2000).

Monopoly descends from The Landlord's Game, created in 1903 by whom?

She designed it to show that an economy rewarding individuals beats one where monopolies hold the wealth.

Bills, notes and bonds are three of the four marketable Treasury security types. What is the fourth?

The US switched to auctioning bills in 1929, copying the British.

Which country's sovereign wealth fund is the world's largest, holding about 1.5% of listed shares?

It is funded by oil profits rather than pension contributions.

Which firm, founded in 1988, is by far the world's largest asset manager?

It began as a risk-management and fixed-income shop.

The Chinese yuan is divided into 10 of what unit?

Each jiao is further split into 10 fen, so a yuan holds 100 fen.

Fannie Mae was founded in 1938 as part of which programme?

Its job was to expand the secondary mortgage market.

Which California lender collapsed in March 2023, the largest US banking failure since 2008?

Its collapse in March 2023 sparked runs on other regional lenders.

The US government's 2008 rescue of insurer AIG ultimately produced what result for taxpayers?

AIG paid back $205 billion against $182.3 billion provided.

A credit default swap pays its buyer if what happens?

It works like insurance on a bond, though buyers need not own the underlying debt.

The savings and loan crisis saw roughly what fraction of US thrifts fail between 1986 and 1995?

Regulators closed 1,043 institutions holding $519 billion in assets.

American Express was started in 1850 in Buffalo, New York, as what kind of company?

Two of its founders, Henry Wells and William Fargo, went on to start Wells Fargo & Co. in 1852.

In which year did UBS complete its emergency takeover of rival Credit Suisse?

The deal, announced at $3.25 billion after talks with the Swiss government, ended a bank founded in 1856 to finance Switzerland's railways.

Charles Dow's first index, from 1884, is the oldest still in use. It tracks which sector?

Charles Dow created it on 3 July 1884 with eleven transportation stocks, mostly railroads.

The bank messaging cooperative SWIFT was founded in 1973 in which city?

It is still headquartered nearby at La Hulpe and hosts the annual Sibos conference for the financial industry.

The 'Master Charge' name used by the Interbank card was coined by a lender in which city?

The 1969 brand paired that name with the overlapping circles of the Western States Bankcard Association; the MasterCard name arrived in 1979.