Finance
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8correct to beat the crowd
209 free Finance trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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 209 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
About 16.4 million shares changed hands on Black Tuesday, 29 October 1929, beating the record of 12.9 million set on Black Thursday five days earlier.
Q 02In which year did the Dow Jones Industrial Average finally regain its 1929 pre-crash peak?
1954
The Dow first closed above its 3 September 1929 peak of 381.17 on 23 November 1954, more than 25 years after the crash.
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 which year did the Dutch flower-bulb bubble burst?
1637
Prices collapsed in February 1637; the Semper Augustus bulb had changed hands for about 10,000 guilders, roughly the price of a grand Amsterdam canal house.
Q 05On Black Monday, 19 October 1987, the Dow Jones fell 508 points, roughly what percentage in a single day?
22.6%
The Dow lost 508 points, or 22.6%, on 19 October 1987, the largest one-day percentage drop in the index's history to that point, amid crashes in futures and options markets.
Q 06Which investment bank's bankruptcy on 15 September 2008 became the defining moment of the financial crisis?
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers filed the largest bankruptcy in US history on 15 September 2008, with over $600 billion in assets, after 158 years in business.
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, Alabama, in 1844; his brothers followed and the firm became 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
Bear Stearns, then the fifth-largest US investment bank, went to JPMorgan Chase for an initial $2 a share, later raised to $10, with the Fed backing $29 billion of its assets.
Q 09How large was the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that Congress authorised in October 2008?
$700 billion
Congress authorised $700 billion for TARP in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 3 October 2008; the Dodd-Frank Act later cut the authority to $475 billion.
Q 10Which British company's 1720 'Bubble' gave its name to a famous Act of Parliament?
South Sea
The South Sea Company had itself lobbied for the Bubble Act of June 1720, which banned rival joint-stock companies lacking a royal charter; its shares collapsed later that year.
Q 11In the Weimar Republic hyperinflation of 1923, roughly how many marks did one US dollar buy by November?
4.2 trillion
By 20 November 1923 the official rate was 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar; a loaf of bread in Berlin had gone from about 160 marks at the end of 1922 to 200 billion marks.
Q 12What temporary currency, backed by mortgage bonds, ended Germany's 1923 hyperinflation?
Rentenmark
The Rentenmark, issued from November 1923 and backed by mortgages on German land and industry, stopped the inflation; the Reichsmark replaced it in August 1924.
Q 13The January 2021 GameStop short squeeze was driven mainly by which online community?
r/wallstreetbets
Q 21Michael Burry, the investor played by Christian Bale in 'The Big Short', trained professionally as what before starting his hedge fund?
A medical doctor
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
Bogle founded Vanguard in 1974 and launched its First Index Investment Trust in 1976; critics dubbed the passive S&P 500 fund 'Bogle's Folly' and called it un-American.
Q 23Isaac Newton spent the last three decades of his life running which British institution?
The Royal Mint
Retail traders on Reddit's r/wallstreetbets piled into GameStop, driving the shares from under $20 to an intraday high near $483 on 28 January 2021, the day Robinhood halted buying.
Q 14The Enron scandal dissolved which accounting firm, then among the world's five largest?
Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditor, was convicted of obstruction in 2002 for shredding documents and surrendered its licences, shrinking from 85,000 staff to a shell; the conviction was overturned in 2005.
Q 15Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the largest known in history, was worth an estimated how much?
$65 billion
Madoff's fictitious account statements showed about $65 billion in client holdings when he was arrested on 11 December 2008; actual cash losses were roughly $17-20 billion.
Q 16Charles Ponzi's 1920 scheme claimed to profit from arbitrage in what?
Postal reply coupons
Ponzi promised 50% in 45 days from buying international postal reply coupons cheaply abroad and redeeming them for US stamps; he never actually traded them at scale.
Q 17What prison sentence did Bernie Madoff receive in June 2009?
150 years
Judge Denny Chin gave Madoff the maximum 150 years on 29 June 2009; he died in federal prison in April 2021, aged 82.
Q 18Warren Buffett was born and built Berkshire Hathaway in which US city?
Omaha
Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on 30 August 1930; Berkshire Hathaway's headquarters in Omaha host an annual meeting nicknamed the 'Woodstock for Capitalists'.
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
Buffett launched the Giving Pledge with Bill and Melinda Gates in June 2010, asking billionaires to give away most of their wealth; the first 40 signatories were announced that August.
Newton was Warden of the Royal Mint from 1696 and its Master from 1699 until his death in 1727; he estimated a fifth of coins handed in during the Great Recoinage were counterfeit.
Q 24The US Federal Reserve System was created by an Act signed in which year?
1913
Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on 23 December 1913, after the Panic of 1907 had exposed the lack of a lender of last resort.
Q 25How many regional Federal Reserve Banks are there in the United States?
Twelve
There are twelve Federal Reserve Banks, from Boston (district 1) to San Francisco (district 12), each serving a district drawn under the 1913 Act.
Q 26Which country has the world's oldest central bank, founded in 1668?
Sweden
Sweden's Riksbank, established in 1668, is the world's oldest central bank; the Bank of England followed in 1694 and stayed privately owned until nationalisation in 1946.
Q 27The Bank of England's nickname 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street' comes from what?
A satirical cartoon
The name comes from James Gillray's 1797 satirical cartoon showing Pitt the Younger wooing an old lady dressed in banknotes; 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 the bank in Florence in 1397; the family's wealth became 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
The Banking Act of 1933, signed by Franklin Roosevelt on 16 June 1933, created the FDIC after thousands of bank failures; deposit insurance began on 1 January 1934.
Q 30Dodd-Frank (2010) made permanent what FDIC insurance cap per ownership category?
$250,000
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act raised the cap from $100,000 to $250,000 in October 2008 as a temporary measure; Dodd-Frank made the $250,000 limit permanent in July 2010.