209 Fun Facts About Finance

Which nickname is given to 29 October 1929, the busiest day of the Wall Street Crash?

Black Tuesday's record 16.4 million shares came five days after Black Thursday's 12.9 million; on the heaviest days the tickers ran hours behind because the machines could not keep up with the trading.

The Dow took 25 years to regain its 1929 peak, under which US president?

Dwight Eisenhower was president when the Dow closed above its September 1929 high on 23 November 1954; the index had lost 89% of its value by mid-1932, which is why the climb back took so long.

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

Tulip bulbs with flame-streaked petals fetched the highest prices in the 1630s; the streaks were later traced to a virus, so the most coveted flowers were in fact the diseased ones.

The Mississippi Company bubble burst in 1720 in which country?

France had let the Scottish gambler John Law run its finances and a company with a monopoly on Louisiana trade; when its shares collapsed in 1720, Law had to leave the country.

On Black Monday, 19 October 1987, the Dow Jones lost roughly what share of its value in one day?

About 23%: the 508-point, 22.6% fall was the largest one-day percentage drop in the Dow's history, and exchanges responded by adding circuit breakers that halt trading when prices plunge.

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

Lehman Brothers, 158 years old, filed the largest bankruptcy in US history, with $639 billion in assets, after the government refused a bailout and weekend talks to sell the firm collapsed.

The 158-year-old firm that collapsed in September 2008 began as a store taking cotton as payment in which US state?

Alabama: a Bavarian immigrant family ran the store in Montgomery, took raw cotton as payment for goods and grew into cotton brokers, opening a New York office in 1858.

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

Bear Stearns went to JPMorgan Chase for an initial $2 a share, raised to $10 after shareholders revolted, with the Fed financing $29 billion of its mortgage assets; a year earlier the shares had topped $170.

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

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.

Which British company's shares soared and then collapsed in the notorious 'Bubble' of 1720?

The South Sea Company won its trade monopoly with Spanish America by agreeing to take over millions of pounds of government debt, a swap of debt for shares that fed the frenzy of 1720.

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

4.2 trillion marks bought one dollar by late November 1923; workers were often paid twice a day and rushed to spend the money before it lost its value.

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

The Rentenmark was backed in name by mortgages on German land and industry that could never really be cashed in, yet Germans chose to trust it and the inflation stopped.

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

Retail traders on Reddit's r/wallstreetbets piled into GameStop, a stock hedge funds had bet against, and drove it up roughly twentyfold in January 2021 until brokers such as Robinhood restricted buying.

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

Arthur Andersen was convicted in 2002 of obstructing justice by shredding Enron audit papers and gave up its licences; the Supreme Court threw out the conviction in 2005, too late to save the firm.

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the largest known in history, showed clients paper holdings of roughly how much?

$65 billion was the total on Madoff's fictitious client statements when his sons turned him in to the authorities in December 2008; the money investors had actually handed over and lost was nearer $18 billion.

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

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.

What prison sentence did Bernie Madoff receive in June 2009?

150 years was the maximum possible; Judge Denny Chin said a message had to be sent that the fraud was 'extraordinarily evil' and not a bloodless crime that takes place on paper.

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

Omaha, Nebraska, is where Buffett was born and kept his office; for decades tens of thousands of shareholders travelled there each year to hear him answer questions for hours, a gathering nicknamed 'Woodstock for Capitalists'.

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

Textiles: Berkshire Hathaway was a declining New England mill company when Buffett began buying its shares in 1962; he shut the last mills in 1985 and has called the purchase his biggest investment mistake.

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

Bill and Melinda Gates joined Buffett in launching the Giving Pledge in 2010, asking the world's wealthiest people to promise the majority of their fortunes to charity in their lifetimes or wills.

Michael Burry, the investor played by Christian Bale in 'The Big Short', trained professionally as what before starting his hedge fund?

A medical doctor: after Vanderbilt medical school he was a neurology resident at Stanford, posting stock picks online between hospital shifts, before he quit medicine to start Scion Capital.

Jack Bogle, who pioneered index funds for ordinary investors, founded which firm?

Vanguard launched its first index fund for individual investors in 1976; industry insiders ridiculed it as 'un-American' and a 'sure path to mediocrity', yet Bogle is now called the 'father of indexing'.

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

The Royal Mint made Newton its Warden in 1696 and Master in 1699; the post was meant to be a sinecure, but he personally questioned suspects and brought counterfeiters to trial.

Which banker personally organised Wall Street's rescue in the Panic of 1907?

J. P. Morgan summoned New York's leading bankers to his library and pressed them to put up money to stop the runs; the panic led Congress to set up the Federal Reserve six years later.

The Federal Reserve's westernmost district is headquartered in which city?

San Francisco has been the head office of the Twelfth District since 1914; Los Angeles, now a far larger city, has only a branch office, as do Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

Which country's central bank, the world's oldest, created the economics prize awarded alongside the Nobel Prizes?

Sweden's Riksbank, founded in 1668, marked its 300th anniversary by funding the economics prize in Alfred Nobel's memory; Nobel's own will had named only five fields, and economics was not one.

Which institution has been nicknamed 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street' since a 1797 cartoon mocked it?

The Bank of England owes the name to James Gillray's 1797 cartoon, in which the prime minister, Pitt the Younger, woos an old lady while reaching for her gold, a jab at his government's constant borrowing.

The Medici Bank, a leading bank of 15th-century Europe, was based in which city?

Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici built the bank in Florence, and under his son Cosimo the Elder, from 1434, its wealth turned into unofficial control of the Florentine Republic.

Which US president signed the law creating the FDIC after thousands of bank failures?

Franklin Roosevelt signed the Banking Act on 16 June 1933; deposit insurance was the amendment that won the bill the backing of its House sponsor, Henry Steagall.

The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 made permanent which FDIC insurance limit per depositor at each bank?

$250,000 began as a temporary limit: Congress raised it from $100,000 in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, and Dodd-Frank made it permanent in July 2010.

The 1944 Bretton Woods conference, where 44 Allied nations agreed the post-war monetary system, met in which US state?

The July 1944 conference met at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and created the IMF and the institution that became the World Bank.

By tradition, the 24 brokers whose 1792 agreement founded the New York Stock Exchange signed it under what?

A buttonwood tree on Wall Street, by tradition: the Buttonwood Agreement fixed a minimum commission of a quarter of one percent and bound the brokers to give preference to one another.

How many companies make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

30 companies make up the Dow; because the index is price-weighted, a stock with a high share price moves it more than a far bigger company whose shares are cheaper.

Which original 1896 Dow Jones stock was finally dropped from the index in 2018?

General Electric was replaced by Walgreens Boots Alliance in June 2018 after its shares had fallen by more than half in a year; it had been in the index without a break since 1907.

Which US stock index took its modern form in 1957?

The S&P 500 dates from March 1957, when Standard & Poor's expanded its index to 500 companies; it weights each company by market value, so the largest firms move it most, whereas the Dow goes by share price.

Which market opened on 8 February 1971 as the world's first electronic stock market, showing dealers' quotes on screens?

Nasdaq opened on 8 February 1971 as an automated quotation system for over-the-counter stocks; trades were done by telephone for years, with electronic execution arriving in 1984.

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

The Dutch East India Company kept its investors' capital rather than paying it back, so holders who wanted out sold their shares to third parties in Amsterdam, and a market in those shares grew up.

The Nikkei 225, a price-weighted index like the Dow, tracks companies listed on the stock exchange of which Japanese city?

Tokyo's exchange lists the Nikkei 225 companies; the index peaked in December 1989 at the height of Japan's bubble and did not set a new record until February 2024, 34 years later.

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

The FTSE 100 began at a base level of 1,000; the London Stock Exchange built it to replace the Financial Times's 30-share index, which no longer reflected activity across the market.

Which stock-market animal is thought to take its name from a proverb about selling the skin before catching the beast?

Bear: in early 18th-century London, dealers who sold shares they did not yet own were nicknamed 'bearskin jobbers', after the proverbial hunter who sold the skin before he had caught the animal.

Who paid for the Charging Bull, which appeared overnight near Wall Street in 1989?

Its sculptor, Arturo Di Modica, financed the bronze himself and trucked it in overnight as a Christmas gift to New Yorkers after the 1987 crash; police impounded it that day, and a public outcry won it a home nearby.

By the common rule of thumb, a recession is two consecutive quarters of decline in what?

GDP shrinking for two straight quarters is the common shorthand, but US recessions are dated by the NBER, which counted the slump from February to April 2020 as one although it lasted only two months.

Which US president ended the dollar's convertibility into gold in August 1971?

Richard Nixon announced it in a televised address on the evening of Sunday 15 August 1971, while markets were closed; until then foreign governments could swap dollars for gold at $35 an ounce.

Which economic 'law', named after a Tudor financier, holds that bad money drives good money out of circulation?

Gresham's law is named after Sir Thomas Gresham, the financier who urged Elizabeth I to restore England's debased coinage; people hoard the more valuable coins and spend the poorer ones.

Which of these EU countries kept its own currency when euro cash arrived in 2002?

Denmark kept the krone: it had negotiated an opt-out, and its voters rejected the euro in a referendum in 2000, though the krone is still held within a narrow band against it.

The $100,000 bill, the largest US banknote ever printed, shows which president, who signed the Federal Reserve Act?

Woodrow Wilson's portrait appears on the 1934 $100,000 gold certificate, used only for transfers between Federal Reserve banks; it never circulated and is illegal for private citizens to hold.

What nickname did US paper money earn from the Demand Notes issued in 1861 to pay for the Civil War?

Greenbacks were named for the green ink on the back of the notes; all US currency issued since 1861 remains valid, so a surviving Demand Note can still be redeemed at face value.

The US cent introduced in 1909 was the first regular American coin to show what?

A president: Lincoln went on the cent for the centennial of his birth; until then no regular US coin had shown a real person, as feeling had long run against portraits on the coinage.

According to Herodotus, which ancient people, ruled by the fabulously rich King Croesus, were the first to use gold and silver coins?

Herodotus credited the Lydians with the first gold and silver coins; their earliest money was electrum, a natural alloy of the two, until Croesus issued separate coins of pure gold and pure silver.

Jiaozi notes, regarded as the first true paper money, appeared in 11th-century China under which dynasty?

The Song dynasty saw merchants in Sichuan issue jiaozi notes in place of heavy iron coins before a government office took over the issue; the idea grew out of Tang-era merchants' deposit receipts.

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

Salt is the root: Latin salarium, from sal, probably began as money given to Roman soldiers for buying salt, on top of their grain ration.

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

A 'death pledge', or dead pledge, is what Old French mort gage means; later English jurists explained that the pledge dies either when the debt is repaid or when the property is forfeited.

Centuries-old pig-shaped terracotta money boxes come from which Indonesian island?

Java: the boar-shaped boxes turn up around Trowulan, and Indonesians still call a money box a celengan, from the Javanese celeng, 'wild boar'.

Who is named as the author of the 2008 white paper that introduced Bitcoin?

Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym whose owner has never been firmly identified, wrote a newspaper headline about a bank bailout into the first block of the bitcoin ledger in January 2009.

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

10,000 bitcoins was Hanyecz's offer on a bitcoin forum for two large pizzas, big enough to leave leftovers; the taker ordered them from Papa John's and kept the coins.

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

Barclays unveiled the machine at its Enfield branch on 27 June 1967; with no plastic cards yet, customers fed in a paper cheque impregnated with mildly radioactive carbon-14.

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

Diners Club began, by the company's account, after Frank McNamara found himself in a New York restaurant without his wallet; cardholders had to settle the whole bill each month.

The magnetic stripe on bank cards was first developed by an engineer at which company?

IBM engineer Forrest Parry could not get magnetic tape to stay on a plastic card until his wife, who was ironing at the time, suggested melting it on with the iron.

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

Visa was chosen in 1976 because the word sounds much the same in every language; founder Dee Hock wanted a name that signalled the card would be accepted everywhere.

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

A section of the US tax code: Section 401(k) was added to the Internal Revenue Code by the Revenue Act of 1978, and benefits consultant Ted Benna built one of the first plans on it at his own firm.

Which job did the Roth IRA's namesake hold?

A US senator: William Roth of Delaware proposed the account, whose twist is that money goes in after tax, so withdrawals in retirement come out tax-free.

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

How long an investment takes to double: divide 72 by the yearly rate, so money growing at 6% a year doubles in about 12 years; 72 is the number used because so many others divide into it evenly.

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

Fair Isaac Corporation is named after its founders, Bill Fair and Earl Isaac, who started it in 1956; the score became a fixture of home loans once Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began using it in 1995.

In which Frank Capra film does a small-town lender spend his honeymoon money to stop a bank run?

It's a Wonderful Life fell out of US copyright in 1974 because the renewal was never filed, so television stations could broadcast it without paying a fee.

Europe's first banknotes, in 1661, stood in for coins that were heavy slabs of which metal?

Copper: the plate coins could weigh several kilograms, so Johan Palmstruch's bank printed lighter paper notes, then issued too many and was wound up within a few years.

Which telecoms giant's 2002 collapse, then the largest US bankruptcy ever, exposed an $11 billion fraud?

WorldCom filed in July 2002, weeks after its own internal auditor, Cynthia Cooper, uncovered $3.8 billion in false entries; the total later passed $11 billion, and CEO Bernard Ebbers got 25 years.

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

Compound interest is earned on past interest as well as on the principal; the line calling it 'the most powerful force in the universe' is forever pinned on Einstein, though no one has shown he said it.

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?

Retained earnings are the profits a corporation has accumulated instead of paying them out; companies usually plough them back into the business, funding new projects or acquisitions or paying down debt.

A company that sells shares to outside investors for the first time on a stock market is said to be doing what?

'Going public', or 'floating' in Britain, is the everyday term for an initial public offering; from then on the company must regularly disclose important and sometimes sensitive information about its business.

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

Earnings per share is the divisor, so 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?

It trades on a stock exchange at a market price all day, where a mutual fund is priced once after the close; and because many ETFs swap securities in kind rather than selling them, they pass on fewer taxable gains.

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

Market cap is share price times the number of shares outstanding; it measures only equity, ignoring debt, so enterprise value is the fuller yardstick.

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

A short seller profits when the price falls: the borrowed asset is sold first and bought back later to return to the lender. Because a share price can rise without limit, so in theory can the loss.

In options trading, the fixed level at which the holder may buy or sell the underlying asset is called what?

The strike price is fixed when the option is written; a call is worth exercising only if the market price rises above it and a put only if the price drops below, otherwise the holder lets the option lapse.

Which American businesswoman was jailed in 2004 for lying to investigators about her sale of shares in a drug company?

Martha Stewart was convicted not of insider trading but of lying to investigators about why she sold her ImClone shares; her broker was jailed too, and she served five months.

Under which chapter of the US Bankruptcy Code does a business reorganise, usually staying in control, rather than liquidate?

Chapter 11 lets a business keep operating as a 'debtor in possession' while it restructures; General Motors filed on 1 June 2009 and its continuing operations emerged under a new company within six weeks.

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

Recruiting new members is the only real income, so the scheme must grow without end: if every member signs up six more, the thirteenth layer alone needs about 13 billion people, more than exist.

Which investor, Warren Buffett's teacher at Columbia, wrote the 1949 classic The Intelligent Investor?

Benjamin Graham's teaching drew the young Buffett to Columbia: turned down by Harvard Business School in 1950, he enrolled there on learning that Graham was on the faculty.

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

Poker gives the term: by American tradition the blue chips are the highest in value on the table, and the label passed to the shares of the most solid, highly regarded companies.

The 1997 Asian financial crisis began when which country gave up defending its currency against the dollar?

Thailand let the baht float on 2 July 1997 after months of speculative attacks had drained its foreign reserves; the currency sank and the panic spread across East Asia.

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

Drexel Burnham Lambert paid Milken more than $1 billion over four years, a US record, but his junk-bond dealings brought criminal charges and the firm was forced into bankruptcy in 1990.

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

SOFR is built from real overnight loans backed by Treasury bonds, whereas Libor rested on banks' own estimates, which traders were caught rigging; the last dollar Libor rates appeared on 30 June 2023.

Which country's central bank launched the first policy called quantitative easing, in March 2001?

Japan was fighting falling prices with interest rates already near zero, so in March 2001 its central bank began creating money to buy bonds; most Western central banks copied it after 2008.

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

Investment banking, such as underwriting securities, stayed off limits to deposit-taking banks until 1999, when the repeal legalised the merger of Citicorp and Travelers into Citigroup, announced a year earlier.

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

Dodd-Frank created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, proposed by Elizabeth Warren and opened in July 2011; it also set up the Financial Stability Oversight Council to watch for systemic risk.

Who became the first chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934?

Joseph P. Kennedy, father of a future president, had grown rich in the unregulated 1920s market using tactics later treated as insider trading and manipulation, the very abuses the new SEC was set up to police.

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

Washington, D.C. is where the IMF was set up to oversee the fixed exchange rates agreed at Bretton Woods; after that system broke down in 1971, its main job became lending to countries in crisis.

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

PwC has long counted the Oscar ballots, and in 2017 its accountants handed a presenter the wrong envelope, so La La Land was announced as Best Picture instead of Moonlight.

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

Long-Term Capital Management had borrowed so heavily that its collapse threatened markets worldwide, so in September 1998 the New York Fed gathered 14 banks and brokers to put in $3.6 billion.

John Meriwether headed bond trading at which bank before founding his 1994 hedge fund?

Meriwether built Salomon Brothers' bond arbitrage group and rose to vice chairman before leaving after the 1991 Treasury auction scandal; Nobel laureates Myron Scholes and Robert Merton joined him at LTCM.

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

Barings earned the label after arranging the finance for the Louisiana Purchase and funding governments on both sides of the Atlantic; the other five powers were England, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia.

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

Singapore jailed Leeson for six and a half years after his unauthorised trades sank his employer in 1995; he had fled, was arrested in Germany and extradited, and was freed early in 1999 after a cancer diagnosis.

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

Société Générale unwound Kerviel's €50 billion of hidden positions in January 2008 at a loss of about €4.9 billion; 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?

Options had no agreed way to be valued until Fischer Black and Myron Scholes published their formula in 1973; Scholes and Robert Merton won the 1997 Nobel for it, two years after Black had died.

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

Modern portfolio theory began as a student project: Markowitz chose to apply mathematics to the stock market for his dissertation, and his 1952 essay showed how diversifying cuts risk without giving up return.

Which Wall Street brokerage became Bloomberg's first customer and took a 30% stake?

Merrill Lynch paid $30 million for its 30% stake; in 2008, facing losses in the financial crisis, it sold its remaining 20% back to Bloomberg for a reported $4.43 billion.

Which former Federal Reserve chairman gives his name to the rule barring US banks from trading for their own profit?

Paul Volcker, credited with ending the high inflation of the 1970s, proposed the rule in 2010: banks that hold customers' deposits should not speculate with them. It became part of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Charles Dow co-founded which newspaper in 1889?

The Wall Street Journal grew out of 'flimsies', news bulletins that messengers hand-delivered to traders through the day; Dow Jones gathered them into a daily letter, which became the paper on 8 July 1889.

In 2021, which country became the first to make bitcoin legal tender?

El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender in September 2021 under President Nayib Bukele, but largely scrapped the law in January 2025 as part of a loan deal with the International Monetary Fund.

The Rothschild banking dynasty originated in which city?

Frankfurt's Jewish quarter, the Judengasse, was home to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who built an international bank by installing his five sons in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna and Naples.

Wells Fargo is a California company, but its national bank charter names which South Dakota city as its main office?

Sioux Falls is the main office that Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. designates, so most US federal courts treat the bank as a citizen of South Dakota rather than of California.

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

Bank of Italy opened in California in 1904 to serve the working-class customers, many of them Italian immigrants, that other banks passed over; it took the name Bank of America in 1930.

Lloyd's of London traces its origins to what kind of business run by Edward Lloyd in the 1680s?

A coffee house on Tower Street, kept by Edward Lloyd, was where shipowners and merchants met to swap shipping news and insure voyages; Lloyd's is still a marketplace of syndicates rather than a single insurer.

Which company bought PayPal in 2002, then spun it off as a separate company in 2015?

eBay bought the payment service that most of its own users preferred to its in-house rival, Billpoint, which it then phased out.

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

Kenya's Safaricom launched M-Pesa in March 2007 so that people without bank accounts could send money by text message; by 2012 about 17 million accounts had been registered.

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

Swahili supplies the name: 'pesa' means money and the M stands for mobile, because the service lets people with no bank account send cash by text message.

Which exchange handled over 70% of the world's bitcoin trades before it collapsed in 2014?

Mt. Gox took its name from 'Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange', the card-trading site its web address was first meant for; it went bankrupt in February 2014 after losing about 850,000 bitcoins.

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

FTX moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to Nassau in the Bahamas in September 2021, though FTX Trading Ltd was incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda; Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas in December 2022.

Dogecoin takes its name and logo from a meme of which dog breed?

Shiba Inu is the breed of Kabosu, the dog in the 'doge' meme; two software engineers built the coin around her face to mock crypto speculation, and by 2021 it ranked among the world's biggest cryptocurrencies.

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

The pound sterling dates back to Anglo-Saxon England around the 8th century, when a pound of silver made 240 pennies, making it the oldest currency in continuous use.

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

The $ sign is also the peso sign, used in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and elsewhere; one theory derives it from the abbreviation 'ps' for pesos in 18th-century Spanish-American accounts.

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

Philadelphia was the national capital when the Coinage Act of April 1792 created the Mint, so the first one was built there.

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

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing began in 1862 as workers in the Treasury building signing, separating and trimming sheets of notes by hand; the engraving and printing came to it only gradually.

Fort Knox, where the US Treasury has stored gold since 1937, is in which state?

Kentucky suited the Treasury because it lies far inland: the vault was built in 1936 as part of a plan to move gold reserves away from coastal cities more exposed to foreign attack.

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

Janet Yellen chaired the Fed from 2014 to 2018, when Donald Trump declined to nominate her for a second term; three years later she became the first woman to run the US Treasury.

Who succeeded Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chairman in 2006?

Ben Bernanke had made his name studying how bank failures deepened the Great Depression, work that later earned him a share of the 2022 Nobel Prize; within two years he faced a banking crisis of his own.

Longest-serving Fed chairman William McChesney Martin likened the Fed to a chaperone who removes what just as the party warms up?

The punch bowl was an image Martin borrowed from a writer, in a 1955 speech, for raising interest rates just as a boom gets going: nobody applauds, he said, but that is the Fed's job. He chaired it from 1951 to 1970.

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

The European Central Bank alone authorises the issue of euro banknotes, yet it has no cash office and handles no cash itself: national central banks put the notes into circulation, and governments issue the coins.

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

The forint replaced the pengő on 1 August 1946 at a rate of 400 octillion pengő to one forint; the pengő itself had replaced the korona only in 1927.

Which magazine has published the Big Mac Index since 1986?

The Economist launched the Big Mac Index in 1986 as a half-joking test of exchange rates: if the same burger costs more in one country than in another, the dearer currency may be overvalued.

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

Government tax revenue is zero at a 0% rate and, the argument runs, at 100% too, so it peaks somewhere between; Arthur Laffer reportedly sketched the curve on a napkin for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in 1974.

Economist John Maynard Keynes took his Cambridge degree in which other subject?

Mathematics was Keynes's degree subject at Cambridge; afterwards he sat in on Alfred Marshall's economics lectures but decided against sitting the exams, so he never held a degree in the field he transformed.

Adam Smith opened The Wealth of Nations with a factory making what?

Pins made Smith's point about dividing labour: a lone worker could barely make one a day, he reckoned, but ten men splitting the job into about eighteen steps turned out some 48,000.

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

Magellan was an obscure $18 million fund when Lynch took over in 1977; he averaged 29.2% a year and had built it past $14 billion by the time he stepped down in 1990.

Which of these investing terms was coined by Peter Lynch?

Ten bagger, his word for a stock that rises tenfold, comes from Lynch's 1989 bestseller One Up on Wall Street, which urged ordinary investors to 'invest in what you know'.

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

Britain had joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990; on 16 September 1992 the government could not hold sterling above its ERM floor despite announcing 15% interest rates, and left the mechanism that evening.

Which investor made about $1 billion by betting against the pound on Black Wednesday in 1992?

George Soros had sold short about $10 billion of sterling, convinced that Britain could not hold up the pound's value; the government gave up the fight that day, and the bet made his name worldwide.

Which quantitative hedge fund did mathematician Jim Simons found?

Renaissance Technologies grew out of a firm Simons started in 1978 after a decade running a university maths department; its Medallion Fund averaged about 66% a year before fees from 1988 to 2018.

Which internet company survived the dot-com crash to report its first quarterly profit, one cent a share, in late 2001?

Amazon had been listed since 1997 without a profit, and shareholders doubted it could survive; the crash destroyed many rivals, but its first profit came in the last quarter of 2001 on sales above $1 billion.

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

A sock puppet with a microphone, performed by comedian Michael Ian Black, fronted the adverts and outlasted the company: in 2002 a car-loan firm bought the rights and put it back on television.

Which retailer picked up the Pets.com web address after the site shut down in November 2000?

PetSmart's own web store had been a rival of Pets.com; a month after the site closed, it bought the domain and trademarks and pointed the address at its own store.

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

Washington Mutual, with $307 billion in assets, was seized after customers pulled $16.7 billion in nine days; regulators 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?

Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt met as Stanford classmates and built trading software for hedge funds before launching Robinhood in 2013; the app opened to the public in 2015.

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

A blank check company raises cash from investors before it has any business of its own, then hunts for a private firm to merge with; investors who dislike the deal can ask for their money back.

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

Alibaba Group raised $25 billion on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014; Aramco edged past it with $25.6 billion in Riyadh by selling just 1.5% of the company.

The oldest stock exchange in Asia was established in 1875 in which city?

Bombay's brokers had traded informally in the open since the 1850s, moving as their numbers grew, until they formed the Native Share & Stock Brokers Association in 1875, Asia's first exchange.

Which payments firm collapsed in 2020 after admitting €1.9 billion was missing?

Wirecard filed for insolvency in June 2020 and its former chief executive was arrested; in response the DAX tightened its entry rules and grew from 30 to 40 companies in 2021.

A 20% US market drop in one session triggers what?

Closure for the day follows once the market is down 20%; drops of 7% and 13% bring only 15-minute pauses, under rules written after the 1987 crash to give panicking traders time to think.

Venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined which term in 2013 for a private startup valued at over $1 billion?

Unicorn was Lee's way of saying how rare such companies were: writing for TechCrunch in November 2013, she counted just 39 among US tech firms started in the previous decade.

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

Venture capital firms followed Kleiner Perkins, which in the 1970s became the first to open an office on Sand Hill Road; the road's name is now shorthand for the whole industry.

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

Unauthorised customer accounts were opened by staff under pressure to hit sales targets; regulators fined the bank a combined $185 million in September 2016, and chief executive John Stumpf resigned.

Which startup falsely claimed it could run blood tests on just a few drops?

Theranos was founded in 2003 by 19-year-old Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes; its technology never worked as claimed, and in 2022 she was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for defrauding investors.

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

Stratton Oakmont, founded by Belfort and Danny Porush in 1989, sold penny stocks through 'pump and dump' schemes until it was shut down in 1996; Belfort later spent 22 months in prison.

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

Lizzie Magie, a follower of economist Henry George, designed The Landlord's Game to show how rent enriches landlords, patenting it in 1904; Charles Darrow sold a derivative to Parker Brothers in 1935.

Which of these is a marketable US Treasury security, alongside bills, notes and bonds?

Inflation-protected securities (TIPS) have a principal that moves with consumer prices, and at maturity they repay whichever is higher, the adjusted sum or the original, so deflation cannot eat the stake.

As of 2025, which country's sovereign wealth fund is the world's largest, owning about 1.5% of all listed shares?

Norway pays its oil and gas income into the fund, and a fiscal rule lets governments spend only its expected real return, about 3% a year, so that later generations share the wealth.

As of 2025, which firm, founded in 1988, is the world's largest asset manager?

BlackRock was born of a failure: Larry Fink's bond desk at First Boston lost $100 million in 1986 on a wrong call on interest rates, so the firm he co-founded two years later was built around managing risk.

What does renminbi, the name of China's currency, mean?

'People's currency' is the literal meaning of the name China gives its money as a whole; the yuan, the word often used abroad for it, is only the basic unit, the one prices are counted in.

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

Fannie Mae was created in 1938 under the New Deal, through amendments to the National Housing Act, to buy mortgages from lenders so that they had fresh money to lend to home buyers.

Which California bank's collapse in March 2023 was, at the time, the biggest US bank failure since 2008?

Silicon Valley Bank served venture-backed technology firms whose deposits were mostly too large to be insured, so when alarm spread among them they rushed to withdraw; regulators closed it on 10 March 2023.

Which insurer's $182 billion government rescue in 2008 ended with a $22.7 billion profit for US taxpayers?

AIG received commitments of $182.3 billion from the Treasury and the New York Fed in return for almost 80% of the company; by the time the last shares were sold in December 2012, $205 billion had come back.

A credit default swap works most like which familiar financial product?

An insurance policy is the closest match: the buyer pays regular premiums and is compensated if the borrower defaults. Unlike insurance, the buyer need not own the debt, so a swap can be a pure bet.

Which future presidential nominee was one of the 'Keating Five' senators tied to a failed savings and loan?

John McCain was one of five senators accused of leaning on regulators in 1987 for donor Charles Keating, whose Lincoln Savings then collapsed at a cost of $3.4 billion; he later made campaign-finance reform his cause.

Henry Wells and William Fargo co-founded which freight company in 1850, two years before starting Wells Fargo?

American Express began by forwarding freight from Buffalo, New York; when its other directors objected to extending the service to California, Wells and Fargo set up a separate company to do it in 1852.

Which bank took over its stricken rival Credit Suisse in June 2023?

UBS agreed the rescue on 19 March 2023, paying about 3 billion francs for a rival founded in 1856 to fund Switzerland's railways; some 16 billion francs of Credit Suisse bonds were written down to zero.

Charles Dow's first index, created in 1884 with eleven stocks, tracks which sector?

Transportation was the sector; Dow built the index on 3 July 1884 from eleven stocks, mostly railroads, and it is older than its better-known relative, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

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

Brussels is where banks founded SWIFT in 1973 to replace telex, on which every payment message had to be written and read by hand; its headquarters are now in nearby La Hulpe.

The Bank for International Settlements, known as the bank for central banks, has its headquarters in which Swiss city?

Basel has hosted the bank since it was set up in 1930 to oversee the settlement of reparations after the First World War; it is the oldest international financial institution.

Which privilege, forbidden to other MPs in the chamber, may Britain's Chancellor enjoy during the Budget speech?

Drinking alcohol is otherwise banned in the Commons chamber, but tradition lets the Chancellor sip whatever they wish during the speech. Kenneth Clarke chose whisky and Geoffrey Howe a gin and tonic.

By tradition, Canada's finance minister buys or wears a new pair of what when delivering the federal budget?

Shoes are bought for budget day in Canada, yet nobody knows why: the custom did not come from Britain, and its first press mention, in 1955, was about a minister in old footwear.

The FIRE movement, inspired by the 1992 book Your Money or Your Life, pairs 'Financial Independence' with what?

Retire Early completes the name: followers save far more than the 10–15% planners usually suggest, aiming to cover living costs from investments without a traditional job.

Engel's law, from statistician Ernst Engel, says the share of income spent on what shrinks as families grow richer?

Food takes a shrinking slice of the budget even while the grocery bill itself grows, which is why poverty lines are often set by how much of a household's spending goes on eating.

Which Japanese budgeting method, published by journalist Motoko Hani in 1904, has a name meaning 'household ledger'?

Kakeibo has savers write their thoughts and observations beside each month's income and spending, because the aim is awareness of their own consumption, not just a tally.

Which US president's final four budgets all ended in surplus, covering the years 1998 through 2001?

Bill Clinton's surpluses were credited to a strong economy, tax rises on upper earners, spending restraint and capital gains revenue from a stock market boom.

Which holiday names the savings 'clubs' US banks have run for over a century so customers can spread the cost of gifts?

Christmas clubs had customers pay in a set amount each week and get the money back at the end of the year. The first, at a Pennsylvania trust company, drew 350 savers.

Which stationery item names the cash-only budgeting system where each spending category gets its own labelled stash?

Envelope budgeting makes overspending physically hard: shoppers take only the one set aside for that category, so when its cash is gone the spending stops.

In the 50/30/20 budget, which category of spending is meant to take up exactly half of a person's net income?

Needs, meaning basic necessities, get 50% of net income in this plan, while wants get 30% and the last 20% is saved. Sorting every expense into just three piles is what keeps it simple.

Which US president brought zero-based budgeting to federal agencies after first using it as governor of his home state?

Jimmy Carter hired the method's inventor, Peter Pyhrr, to manage Georgia's budget process, then took to the White House the idea that every expense must be justified afresh each period.

Which Dickens character says spending sixpence under a twenty-pound income is happiness, and sixpence over is misery?

Mr Micawber fails to live by his own sum and is locked up in a debtors' prison. Dickens modelled the character on his own father, John Dickens.

Which US state is the only one of the fifty with no legal requirement to balance its operating budget?

Vermont alone has no such provision on its books. At the federal level, an amendment demanding a balanced budget passed the House in 1995 and came within one vote of passing the Senate.

The word 'budget' comes from the Old French 'bougette', which was a small version of what everyday object?

A leather bag is where a treasury minister was imagined to keep his fiscal plans, which is how a word for a little sack came to mean a statement of expected spending by 1733.

On the first day of which month does the US federal government's fiscal year begin?

October has opened the federal fiscal year since 1976, when Washington moved its year-end from 30 June to 30 September. Most states kept the older July start.

Disposable income is what remains after tax; which kind of income is the money left once essential bills are paid too?

Discretionary income is the real spending-money figure, and the two terms are often mixed up: 'disposable' sounds like spare cash, yet it must first cover every necessary bill.

Which budgeting motto, the basis of the 80/20 plan, means moving money into savings before spending on anything else?

Pay yourself first flips the usual order of a budget: at least 20% of net income is saved up front, and the remaining 80% can then be spent freely.

Which budgeting app, built by accounting student Jesse Mecham in 2004, tells users to 'give every dollar a job'?

YNAB, short for You Need a Budget, began as software Mecham wrote during his master's degree after he and his spouse hit money trouble and decided to budget better.

Which term for money set aside gradually for a known future cost was first used to pay down Britain's national debt?

Sinking fund was the name for the reserve Robert Walpole used in 1716 to retire public debt, though the device began with the tax syndicates of 14th-century Italian cities.

Which budget term, from the Latin for 'it is wanting', describes a year in which spending outruns income?

Deficit was the word that opened clauses of an inventory in Latin, and English borrowed it from French in the 1780s to mean a shortfall in money.

Net income, the figure that the 50/30/20 budget rule divides into three, goes by which everyday name?

Take-home pay is what is left of a paycheck once taxes and other deductions come out, which is why a spending plan starts from it and not from the bigger gross figure.

Which kind of 'creep' turns former luxuries into perceived necessities when spending rises at the same rate as income?

Lifestyle creep can follow a pay rise or a paid-off mortgage, and it shows up in purchases such as expensive vehicles, a second home or club memberships with ongoing costs.

Which Nobel laureate developed 'mental accounting', the theory that people sort money into separate imaginary pots?

Richard Thaler's theory explains a classic finding: people will drive 20 minutes to save $5 on a $15 purchase but not on a $125 one, though the saving is identical. He won the economics Nobel in 2017.

In the classic economics model of a nation's spending choices, 'guns' are traded off against which kitchen staple?

Butter stands for civilian goods such as schools, hospitals and roads. One theory traces the phrase to press coverage of a 1916 US act to make nitrates for fertiliser in peace and munitions in war.

India's finance minister marks the start of printing the Union Budget by serving staff which sweet dish?

Halwa is served because Indian custom calls for sharing something sweet before an important task. The ceremony also begins a spell of isolation for the ministry staff who print the documents.

Which meat names the US practice of steering federal spending to local projects in a politician's own district?

Pork barrel started out harmless: an 1863 story by Edward Everett Hale used it for any public spending on citizens, and only after the Civil War did it become an insult.

Which nonpartisan agency, created by a 1974 act that Richard Nixon signed, estimates what proposed US laws would cost?

Congressional Budget Office was inspired by California's Legislative Analyst's Office, and it publishes cost estimates for bills without making any policy recommendations.

Which religious payment, named from the Old English for 'tenth', takes a fixed share of a believer's income?

Tithe kept its church meaning while 'tenth' took over as the ordinary number word. It was once compulsory and paid in farm produce; modern ones are normally voluntary and paid in money.

Which word, from the Latin for 'harsh', names a government programme of spending cuts and tax rises to curb borrowing?

Austerity had a famous critic in John Maynard Keynes, who argued that 'the boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.'

Which Founding Father's Poor Richard's Almanack gave rise to the proverb 'A penny saved is a penny earned'?

Benjamin Franklin never printed those exact words: the familiar version is a misquotation of his almanac's line, in which a penny saved was worth twopence.

Which sweet did Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel famously offer children in his studies of delayed gratification?

Marshmallow at once, or a second treat for waiting, was the choice. A far larger replication found only half the original effect and suggested family money, not willpower, explained the rest.

Which figure, used by Forbes to rank the world's billionaires, equals all that a person owns minus all they owe?

Net worth counts a person's retirement accounts, home and vehicles on the plus side, and the same sum is worked out for companies, governments and even entire countries.

Which term for long-term savings first meant a real or artificial object left under a hen to keep her laying?

Nest egg has meant retirement savings since 1700, on the idea of something laid up as the beginning of a continued growth.

Cash machine pioneer John Shepherd-Barron planned a six-digit PIN until which relative could only remember four digits?

His wife set a habit for the world: four digits became the most common PIN length in many places, though banks in Switzerland and many other countries insist on six.

Which scam, first documented on AOL in 1995, uses fake messages to trick people into revealing bank passwords?

Phishing had an early tool in AOHell, a 1994 program that let users pose as AOL staff and message victims asking them to reveal their passwords.

Which kind of US bank account, called a current account in Britain, is built for frequent payments and withdrawals?

Checking account money is held 'on demand': the owner can reach it immediately and as often as they like, or direct the bank to pay it to somebody else.

Which kind of financial institution, pioneered in 1850s Germany, is a nonprofit owned by its own members?

Credit union history is dated from 1852, when Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch built on two pilot projects in Saxony to form what are generally recognised as the first in the world.

Which banking facility, first granted in 1728 by the Royal Bank of Scotland, lets a customer spend below a zero balance?

Overdraft history began with merchant William Hogg, who was struggling to balance his books and was allowed to draw on an empty account to pay his debts before his own payments came in.

Which insurance term, called the 'excess' in Britain, names what a policyholder pays before the insurer pays anything?

Deductible and price pull in opposite directions: insurers typically charge less for a policy when the customer agrees to shoulder more of each claim first.

Which US tax form, which employers must give staff by 31 January, reports a year's wages and the tax withheld?

W-2 forms, officially titled the Wage and Tax Statement, are due in January so that workers have time to prepare their returns before the standard 15 April deadline.

Which author's 1997 bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dad contrasts his own father with his best friend's wealthy father?

Robert Kiyosaki avoided questions about the 'rich dad' for years, raising suspicions that no such person existed, until Hawaiian hotel developer Richard Kimi was identified as the mentor after his death.

Which ancient city is the setting of George S. Clason's 1926 book of money parables told by a scribe named Arkad?

Babylon is in the title, The Richest Man in Babylon: Arkad starts as a poor scribe, grows wealthy and hands on his 'Seven Cures' for making money.

Which shop scheme, common in the Great Depression, holds goods back until the buyer has paid for them in instalments?

Layaway was widely withdrawn in the 1980s as credit cards spread, but Walmart brought it back in 2011 when shoppers were finding credit harder to get.

Which sociologist coined 'conspicuous consumption' in 1899 for buying luxuries mainly as a public display of wealth?

Thorstein Veblen also gave his name to 'Veblen goods', luxuries for which demand climbs as the price goes up, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand.

Which British savings product, sold since 1956, pays no interest but enters holders in a monthly prize draw?

Premium Bonds turn the interest into a lottery, and the winning numbers are picked by ERNIE, a machine whose name is short for Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment.

Which kind of fund, also called a contingency fund, is a safety net for job loss or sudden car repairs?

Emergency fund savings are meant to stop a lost job or a broken home appliance from leaving someone dependent on credit, falling into debt or running out of money altogether.

Which word for an unexpected gain of money first meant wood or fruit brought to the ground by a gale?

Windfall wood and fruit were free to all, since nature had done the harvesting, and by the 1540s the word had stretched to cover any unexpected acquisition.

Which Gilded Age financier, known as 'the richest woman in America', was nicknamed the 'Witch of Wall Street'?

Hetty Green may have got the name from her dour black dress, a product of frugality, and the Guinness Book of World Records later named her the 'greatest miser' for a time.

Which word describes the closing of non-essential US federal services, required since 1980 when funding lapses?

Shutdown rules come from a law passed in 1870, yet only since a legal opinion by Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti has it been read as forcing unfunded agencies to stop work.

Which kind of veto, barred to presidents but held by most US governors, strikes single parts from a spending bill?

Line-item veto powers once ran so far in Wisconsin that governors could strike individual letters within words to make new words, the 'Vanna White veto' abolished by a 1990 amendment.

Which tax-advantaged US plan, also called a qualified tuition program, is designed for saving towards college costs?

529 plan money was freed in 2017 to pay school tuition from kindergarten up, after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act widened what counts as a qualified expense.