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60 free Wall Street trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Wall Street trivia quiz covers the eight-block street in Lower Manhattan that became shorthand for American finance. The easy questions are the ones most people know: which city, which exchange, the bronze bull, the movie villain who declared greed good and the crash that ushered in the Great Depression. From there the set digs into the history: the wooden palisade Peter Stuyvesant ordered in 1653, the slave market at the foot of the street, George Washington's inauguration on the Federal Hall balcony, and the 24 brokers who signed the Buttonwood Agreement in 1792. The harder end covers the great shocks and symbols: the 1920 horse-drawn wagon bomb that was never solved, Black Thursday and Black Tuesday in 1929, the 508-point Black Monday of 1987, the guerrilla-art arrival of Charging Bull, Fearless Girl and the sculptor who wanted her gone, Occupy Wall Street's 59 days in Zuccotti Park, the opening and closing bells, the first woman to buy a seat on the exchange and the real financiers behind Gordon Gekko. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the street, the exchange, the crashes, the sculptures and the films before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our New York City, The Wolf of Wall Street and American history quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Wall Street runs through the financial district of which US metropolis?
New York
It runs eight blocks through Lower Manhattan, from Broadway to the East River.
Q 02Roughly how long is Wall Street?
Just under 2,000 feet
It runs eight city blocks between Broadway and South Street on the East River.
Q 03What did the Dutch call the street when it was part of New Amsterdam?
Het Cingel
The name means the Belt, and was also used for Amsterdam's own outer barrier street.
Q 04Between which years did an actual wall stand along the street?
1653 to 1699
It was removed once the city had grown well beyond it.
Q 05Who ordered the original wall built at the start of the first Anglo-Dutch war?
Peter Stuyvesant
He feared an overland attack by English troops from New England.
Q 06What was the original wall made of?
Dirt and wooden planks
It ran 2,340 feet, stood 9 feet tall, and was built by enslaved Africans and white colonists.
Q 07The Dutch named the wall's two stone bastions Hollandia and Zeelandia after what?
The ships that carried their invasion force
By the late 1600s the wall encircled most of the city.
Q 08What did the New York Common Council establish at the foot of Wall Street in December 1711?
The city's first official slave market
The city taxed every person bought and sold there.
Q 09Which event took place on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street on April 30, 1789?
George Washington's first inauguration
The building also hosted the First Congress before the capital moved.
Q 10Which founding father, architect of the US financial system, is buried at Trinity Church on Wall Street?
Alexander Hamilton
Steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton lies in the same churchyard.
Q 11How many brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement in 1792?
24
They agreed to deal only with each other, cutting out the auctioneers.
Q 12Where was the Buttonwood Agreement signed?
Outside 68 Wall Street
The brokers moved into the Tontine Coffee House at Wall and Water streets the following year.
Q 13What commission rate did the Buttonwood brokers agree to charge?
0.25%
The other provision was that they would deal only with each other, cutting out auctioneers.
Q 14What is the nickname of the New York Stock Exchange?
Q 21Which activist group chained themselves to the NYSE balcony in 1989 with a banner reading SELL WELLCOME?
ACT UP
The target was drug maker Burroughs Wellcome and the price of AIDS drug AZT.
Q 22Why did the NYSE switch to all-electronic trading on March 23, 2020?
The COVID-19 pandemic
The floor reopened on May 26, 2020.
Q 23At what time of day did the 1920 Wall Street bombing take place, maximising lunchtime casualties?
12:01 pm
The blast killed 30 people immediately and eight more later died of wounds.
The Big Board
It is the world's largest exchange by market capitalisation.
Q 15Which holding company, itself listed under the ticker ICE, owns the NYSE?
Intercontinental Exchange
The deal to take over the exchange closed in 2013.
Q 16In what year did the NYSE move into its current Beaux Arts building at 18 Broad Street?
1903
The neighbouring 11 Wall Street building followed in 1922.
Q 17At what time is the NYSE opening bell rung?
9:30 am
The closing bell rings at 4 pm Eastern Time.
Q 18What colour is the button that rings the NYSE's main opening and closing bell?
Green
An orange button signals a moment of silence and a red one controls a backup bell.
Q 19What was the original signal to start and stop trading before the bell?
A gavel
The gavel is still used alongside the bell today.
Q 20Who became the first female member of the New York Stock Exchange in 1967?
Muriel Siebert
Women had first been allowed on the trading floor in 1943, while men were away at war.
Q 24How was the 1920 Wall Street bomb delivered?
In a horse-drawn wagon
The driver was seen leaving the vehicle and escaping down a side street.
Q 25What was packed around the dynamite in the 1920 bomb to act as shrapnel?
Cast-iron sash weights
Investigators believe Galleanist anarchists were responsible; the case was never solved.
Q 26Which building was left with visible damage from the 1920 bombing?
23 Wall Street
The four-storey building at 23 Wall Street was known as the House of Morgan; the pockmarks were never repaired.
Q 27Which once-tallest skyscraper, built as the Bank of Manhattan Company Building, later became the Trump Building?
40 Wall Street
The 71-storey tower went up in 1929 and 1930.
Q 28Roughly how many shares traded on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, then a record?
16 million
Black Thursday, five days earlier, had seen 12.9 million shares change hands.
Q 29At what level did the Dow Jones Industrial Average peak on September 3, 1929?
381.17
It did not return to that closing peak for 25 years, until November 1954.
Q 30How many years did the Dow take to regain its 1929 peak?
25
It reached bottom at 41.22 in July 1932, an 89 percent loss.