160 free Finance trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
67 free finance trivia questions with answers. These finance trivia questions cover the whole world of money: the 1929 crash and Black Monday, tulip mania and the South Sea Bubble, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, Bitcoin, the euro, credit cards, cash machines and the swindles of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff. There are questions on Warren Buffett and Jack Bogle, on why a salary is named after salt and a mortgage after death, and on the bull and bear that came out of a London coffee-house alley. The set is built for pub quiz hosts, finance teams, classrooms and anyone who reads the business pages. It runs from easy questions most people can get (how many companies are in the Dow?) to expert ones that only a market historian will know (when did the Bank of England print its first cheque form?). Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each explanation adds one more fact worth remembering.
30 of 160 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many shares traded on 'Black Tuesday', 29 October 1929, the worst day of the crash?
16.4 million
Five days earlier, Black Thursday had set the previous record of 12.9 million shares.
Q 02Before the 1929 crash, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had risen roughly how much over a nine-year run?
Tenfold
It peaked at 381.17 on September 3, 1929, a level it would not see again until 1954.
Q 03Which flower was at the centre of what is generally called the first recorded speculative bubble?
Tulip
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.
Q 04In what year did the Dutch tulip market dramatically collapse?
1637
The most expensive bulb of the mania, the Semper Augustus, had sold for 10,000 guilders, roughly the price of a grand canal house.
Q 05On Black Monday, 19 October 1987, the Dow Jones fell by roughly what percentage in a single day?
22.6%
The 508-point drop remains the largest one-day percentage fall in the index's history.
Q 06Which investment bank's bankruptcy on 15 September 2008 became the defining moment of the financial crisis?
Lehman Brothers
The firm had been in business for 158 years, having started as a dry-goods store in Montgomery, Alabama.
Q 07The 158-year-old firm that collapsed in September 2008 began as a dry-goods store in which US state?
Alabama
Bavarian immigrant Henry Lehman opened the shop in Montgomery in 1844; his brothers followed and the name changed to Lehman Brothers in 1850.
Q 08Which US investment bank was sold to JPMorgan Chase in a Fed-backed 'fire sale' in March 2008?
Bear Stearns
It was then the fifth-largest US investment bank; the initial offer was just $2 a share.
Q 09How large was the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that Congress authorised in October 2008?
$700 billion
Only one US banker went to jail as a result of the crisis: Kareem Serageldin of Credit Suisse.
Q 10Which British company's 1720 'Bubble' gave its name to a famous Act of Parliament?
South Sea
The company had lobbied for the Bubble Act itself, which banned rival joint-stock companies without a royal charter.
Q 11In the Weimar Republic hyperinflation of 1923, roughly how many marks did one US dollar buy by November?
4.2 trillion
A loaf of bread in Berlin went from about 160 marks at the end of 1922 to 200 billion marks a year later.
Q 12What temporary currency, backed by mortgage bonds, ended Germany's 1923 hyperinflation?
Rentenmark
It was later replaced by the Reichsmark, and the central bank was barred from printing further paper money.
Q 13The January 2021 GameStop short squeeze was driven mainly by which online community?
r/wallstreetbets
Several hedge funds that were short the stock took heavy losses, and Robinhood briefly halted buying on January 28.
Q 21Michael Burry, the investor played by Christian Bale in 'The Big Short', trained professionally as what?
A medical doctor
He earned an MD from Vanderbilt in 1997 before starting the hedge fund Scion Capital with family loans and an inheritance.
Q 22Jack Bogle, who launched the first public index fund, founded which firm in 1974?
Vanguard
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.
Q 23Isaac Newton spent the last three decades of his life running which British institution?
The Royal Mint
He estimated that a fifth of the coins handed in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit.
Q 14The Enron scandal dissolved which accounting firm, then among the world's five largest?
Arthur Andersen
The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in reaction to Enron and WorldCom, tightening rules on corporate boards and auditors.
Q 15Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the largest known in history, was worth an estimated how much?
$65 billion
He was arrested on 11 December 2008 and sentenced to 150 years, the maximum allowed.
Q 16Charles Ponzi's 1920 scheme claimed to profit from arbitrage in what?
Postal reply coupons
He promised a 50% return in 45 days; the coupons let someone abroad prepay a correspondent's return postage.
Q 17What prison sentence did Bernie Madoff receive in June 2009?
150 years
The court-appointed trustee has since recovered and returned more than $14 billion of investors' actual losses.
Q 18Warren Buffett was born and built Berkshire Hathaway in which US city?
Omaha
Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting there draws tens of thousands and is nicknamed the 'Woodstock of Capitalism'.
Q 19Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's holding company, was originally a manufacturer of what?
Textiles
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.
Q 20Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 with which couple?
Bill and Melinda Gates
Mark Zuckerberg was among the early signatories that December.
Q 24The US Federal Reserve System was created by an Act signed in which year?
1913
It came after a string of financial panics; twelve regional Reserve Banks oversee privately owned commercial banks.
Q 25How many regional Federal Reserve Banks are there in the United States?
Twelve
Congress gave the Fed three goals: maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.
Q 26Which country has the world's oldest central bank, founded in 1668?
Sweden
The Bank of England followed in 1694 and is the second oldest; it remained privately owned until 1946.
Q 27The Bank of England's nickname 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street' comes from what?
A satirical cartoon
James Gillray drew it in 1797; the bank has stood on Threadneedle Street since 1734.
Q 28The Medici Bank, the largest and most respected bank in 15th-century Europe, was based in which city?
Florence
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.
Q 29The FDIC, which insures US bank deposits, was created by legislation passed in which year?
1933
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.
Q 30Dodd-Frank (2010) made permanent what FDIC insurance cap per ownership category?
$250,000
The cap was raised from $100,000 during the 2008 crisis and made permanent by the Dodd-Frank Act.