56 Fun Facts About Wall Street

On Wall Street a rising market is a bull market, while a falling market is named after which animal?

Bear most likely comes from the proverb about selling the bearskin before catching the bear: London's 'bearskin jobbers' of the early 1700s sold shares they did not yet own, betting on a fall.

Wall Street's 'blue chip' stocks take their name from the most valuable chip in which game?

Poker's priciest chip was borrowed, the story goes, by a Wall Street Journal reporter for stocks trading at $200 or more, so the label first meant expensive stocks; only later did it come to mean dependable ones.

The Dutch called Wall Street Het Cingel, a name shared with an Amsterdam canal that began as the city's what?

Moat: the Singel once ringed medieval Amsterdam's walls. New Amsterdam did have a Waal Straat, but it was the wharf street, now part of Pearl Street, which later historians confused with Wall Street.

In 1653 the Dutch built Wall Street's wall chiefly to keep out which European rival?

The English attack feared from New England never came; when they finally took the town in 1664 they arrived by sea, and it surrendered to their warships without a battle.

Which Dutch colonial leader ordered the building of the wall that gave Wall Street its name?

Peter Stuyvesant called an emergency meeting in March 1653, and the order soon went out that the citizens, without exception, must turn out and work on the defences.

What was the Dutch wall that gave Wall Street its name originally made of?

Dirt and wooden planks formed a nine-foot barrier, raised partly by enslaved Africans. It was pulled down in 1699, but the street that ran beside it kept the name.

What did New York's Common Council establish at the foot of Wall Street in 1711?

The city's first official slave market stood at Wall and Pearl streets until 1762, and the city collected tax on every person sold there.

Which event took place on the balcony of Wall Street's Federal Hall in April 1789?

George Washington's first inauguration took place on a building that is gone: the original Federal Hall was demolished in 1812, and a later building now stands on the site.

Which founding father is buried in Trinity Churchyard at the head of Wall Street?

Alexander Hamilton was buried here in 1804 after his duel with Aaron Burr. His wife Eliza, who outlived him by 50 years, lies beside him.

What did the 24 brokers who founded the New York Stock Exchange in 1792 agree to fix?

A minimum commission of a quarter of one percent was one of the pact's two promises; the other was to favour each other. Fixed commissions survived until 1 May 1975.

The 1792 pact that created the New York Stock Exchange is named after which kind of tree?

Buttonwood is an old name for the sycamore under which, by tradition, the brokers met outside 68 Wall Street. A year later they moved indoors to the Tontine Coffee House.

What did Abbie Hoffman and fellow protesters shower on New York Stock Exchange traders from the visitors' gallery in 1967?

Dollar bills fluttered down and some traders scrambled to grab them, just the picture Hoffman wanted. The exchange soon enclosed the gallery behind bulletproof glass.

What is the nickname of the New York Stock Exchange?

The Big Board is the NYSE. Its smaller rival, the American Stock Exchange, was long known as the Curb, and in 2008 the Big Board's parent company bought it.

Which company that began as an online energy market agreed in 2012 to buy the New York Stock Exchange's parent?

Intercontinental Exchange was only 12 years old when it struck the deal, swallowing an institution that traces its roots to 1792.

The first guest to ring the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell, in 1956, was a 10-year-old who had won what?

A television quiz show: ten-year-old Leonard Ross won it by answering questions about the stock market, so the exchange made him its first guest bell-ringer.

At what time does the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell ring each trading day, New York time?

9:30 am opens the trading day and 4 pm closes it; the exchange says the bells exist so that no trade happens before the open or after the close.

What colour is the button that rings the New York Stock Exchange's main opening and closing bell?

Green rings the main bell. Orange and red buttons sit beside it, the red one a backup in case the main bell fails.

What did the New York Stock Exchange first use to signal the start and end of trading, long before its bell?

A gavel came first, then a Chinese gong in the 1870s, and the brass bell only when the exchange moved into its present building. The gavel is still struck at the close.

In 1967, Muriel Siebert became the first woman to do what?

Join the New York Stock Exchange: nine men refused to sponsor her application, and for almost a decade she was the only woman among 1,365 male members.

Which activist group chained itself to the New York Stock Exchange balcony in 1989 under a banner reading SELL WELLCOME?

ACT UP was protesting the price of the AIDS drug AZT, and its foghorns drowned out the opening bell. Within days the maker, Burroughs Wellcome, cut the price.

What first forced the New York Stock Exchange to shut its trading floor while trading carried on electronically?

The COVID-19 pandemic: after two people tested positive at its door screenings, the floor went dark from 23 March to 26 May 2020. Earlier shutdowns, as after 9/11, had stopped trading altogether.

What did Wall Street do the morning after a bomb killed dozens there in September 1920?

Opened for business as usual: crews cleaned the street overnight so trading could resume, sweeping away physical evidence in a case that was never solved.

How was the 1920 Wall Street bomb delivered?

In a horse-drawn wagon: the driver climbed down and disappeared into the lunchtime crowd, and minutes later the cart exploded in a hail of metal.

Which group do historians believe planted the 1920 Wall Street bomb, a crime never officially solved?

Italian anarchists who followed Luigi Galleani are the chief suspects: flyers found nearby, signed American Anarchist Fighters, demanded the release of political prisoners.

Which skyscraper beat 40 Wall Street to the title of world's tallest with a spire hidden inside its crown?

The Chrysler Building: its architect had a spire built in secret inside the crown, then raised it to 1,046 feet to take the title. The Bank of Manhattan tower, later the Trump Building, was left second.

Which show-business paper summed up the 1929 crash with the headline 'Wall St. Lays an Egg'?

Variety ran it across its front page on October 30, 1929, in the week the market collapsed. To lay an egg is slang for flopping badly, as a show does.

Who was US president when the Dow finally climbed back to its 1929 peak, 25 years after the crash?

Dwight D. Eisenhower: the Dow did not pass its 1929 peak until 23 November 1954. By July 1932 it had lost 89 percent, so it had to rise ninefold just to get back.

Which president's father, a famed 1920s stock speculator, became the first chairman of the SEC, Wall Street's new watchdog, in 1934?

John F. Kennedy's father, Joseph, had grown rich on market tactics that were then legal. As the SEC's first chairman he outlawed the very practices that had made his fortune.

What did Wall Street's leading bankers do in October 1929 to try to stop the panic?

They bought shares above market price: the exchange's vice president walked onto the floor and bid high for U.S. Steel with the bankers' money behind him. Prices steadied that day, then collapsed the next week.

Days before the 1929 crash, Yale economist Irving Fisher said stock prices had reached a 'permanently high' what?

Plateau: Irving Fisher said so at a New York dinner in mid-October 1929. Within two weeks the market had collapsed, taking much of his own fortune with it.

What name was given to 19 October 1987, when the Dow lost 22.6 percent in a single day?

Black Monday: computer programs built to sell as prices fell fed the 508-point slide. Even the worst day of the 1929 crash had cost the Dow only about 13 percent.

Which Fed chairman issued a brief statement on October 20, 1987 promising liquidity to support the financial system?

Alan Greenspan had replaced Paul Volcker only two months earlier. Behind his one-sentence statement the Fed pressed banks to keep lending, and no recession or banking crisis followed the crash.

What did US stock exchanges introduce after the 1987 crash to halt trading automatically when prices plunge?

Circuit breakers pause all trading for 15 minutes if the S&P 500 falls 7 percent in a day, and again at 13 percent, to give traders time to think. A 20 percent fall shuts the market for the day.

How did Charging Bull first arrive on Wall Street in December 1989?

Illegally dropped from a truck at night, with no permit: it was left beneath a 60-foot Christmas tree outside the stock exchange, where hundreds stopped to admire it before it was hauled away that same day.

Where did New York City give Charging Bull a home in late December 1989?

Bowling Green: the bull drew such crowds in its one day outside the stock exchange that the parks department gave the unlicensed statue a public home there, and it stayed for decades.

Who paid the bill for making Charging Bull, Wall Street's famous three-and-a-half-ton bronze?

The sculptor himself: Arturo Di Modica, a Sicilian-born artist working in SoHo, paid for the bull out of his own pocket. He made it in answer to the 1987 crash, as a tribute to the strength of the American people.

What was the Fearless Girl statue, placed facing Charging Bull in 2017, meant to promote?

Women on company boards: State Street Global Advisors installed her for a campaign urging firms to appoint women directors. Planned for a few weeks, her stay stretched past a year before she moved to face the stock exchange.

Which retailer's shares did amateur investors on Reddit send soaring in January 2021, at the expense of Wall Street hedge funds?

GameStop: hedge funds had bet billions that its shares would fall, so Reddit traders bought together to drive them up. The funds then had to buy shares to limit their losses, which pushed the price higher still.

What marked the spot where Fearless Girl first stood once the statue moved in 2018?

A plaque with two footprints, so visitors could stand where she had: it read 'Until she's there, stand for her.' The statue itself moved to face the New York Stock Exchange.

Where did the Occupy Wall Street protesters camp out for two months in 2011?

Zuccotti Park was a fallback: police had fenced off Charging Bull, where organisers had hoped to gather, so the crowd was steered to the privately owned plaza. A night raid cleared it on November 15.

Which Canadian magazine issued the original call for the Occupy Wall Street protest?

Adbusters, an anti-consumerist magazine from Vancouver, launched the #OCCUPYWALLSTREET hashtag in July 2011. Its poster showed a dancer balanced on the back of Charging Bull.

What was Occupy Wall Street's best-known slogan?

We are the 99%: the slogan set everyone else against the richest 1 percent of Americans. The camp was cleared within two months, but the phrase persisted and reframed the national argument about inequality.

Who directed the 1987 film Wall Street?

Oliver Stone drew on memories of his own father's career as a Wall Street stockbroker to write its story of a young broker led astray.

Which famous line from the 1987 film Wall Street echoed a real speech by the financier Ivan Boesky?

Greed is good: in 1986 Boesky told business graduates in California that greed was healthy. Within months he had pleaded guilty in an insider-trading scandal, and he was fined 100 million dollars.

What unusual awards double did the 1987 film Wall Street achieve?

An Oscar and a Razzie: Michael Douglas won Best Actor as Gordon Gekko, a part he said few people thought he could play, while Daryl Hannah was voted Worst Supporting Actress for the same film.

Which real-life father and son played father and son in the 1987 film Wall Street?

Martin and Charlie Sheen: Charlie, cast as the young broker Bud Fox, wanted his own father to play Bud's father, and he got his wish.

Which brokerage founder ran Stratton Oakmont, the firm portrayed in The Wolf of Wall Street?

Jordan Belfort wrote his memoir at the urging of the comedian Tommy Chong, who shared his prison quarters and pushed him to put his stories on paper. Leonardo DiCaprio played him in the 2013 film.

Which industry supplied nine of the eleven stocks in Charles Dow's first average of 1884?

Railroads: nine rail lines sat beside Western Union and a steamship company. Dow printed the list in his afternoon newsletter, which five years later grew into The Wall Street Journal.

What did publisher John Peter Zenger's 1735 trial on Wall Street help establish?

Freedom of the press: the judge told jurors that truth was no defence to libel, but they acquitted Zenger anyway because what he had printed about the governor was true.

What rests on Manhattan's bedrock, 80 feet beneath the New York Federal Reserve building near Wall Street?

A vault of gold bars: hundreds of thousands of them, yet none belongs to the Fed. It only guards the gold for the US government, foreign governments and other central banks.

Which 1987 Tom Wolfe novel follows a Wall Street bond trader, a self-styled 'Master of the Universe'?

The Bonfire of the Vanities: a wrong turn into the Bronx, where his car hits a young man, brings Sherman McCoy's gilded life crashing down. It was Wolfe's first novel, after decades as a star journalist.

Which Wall Street investment bank collapsed in September 2008 in what was then the largest bankruptcy in US history?

Lehman Brothers grew from a general store opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1844, where farmers paid in cotton. On the day it filed, Bank of America announced it was buying rival Merrill Lynch instead.

Which Herman Melville short story of 1853 is subtitled 'A Story of Wall Street'?

Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Wall Street lawyer hires a copyist who comes to meet every request with 'I would prefer not to', and who ends up jailed as a vagrant. Melville published it anonymously.

New York's first ticker-tape parade erupted in 1886 when Wall Street office workers celebrated the dedication of which landmark?

The Statue of Liberty: as the procession passed, office workers hurled the paper ribbon from their stock tickers out of the windows. The city later made such parades an official honour.

Which German bank's US headquarters occupied 60 Wall Street from 2001 to 2021?

Deutsche Bank agreed to buy the tower months before the September 11 attacks wrecked its offices beside the World Trade Center, then moved 5,500 staff in. It moved uptown to Columbus Circle in 2021.

Which former Nasdaq chairman was jailed for 150 years in 2009 for running a vast Ponzi scheme?

Bernie Madoff paid old investors with new investors' money. When the scheme collapsed amid the 2008 financial crisis he confessed to his family, was given the maximum sentence, and died in prison in 2021.