Acronyms & Abbreviations
This investment vehicle can track the whole S&P 500 but trades on an exchange all day just like a single stock.
What is an ETF
Launched in its current form in 1957, this stock index tracks hundreds of the largest U.S. companies and is the benchmark most people mean when they talk about "the market."
What is the S&P 500
In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort's Stratton Oakmont got rich pushing these cheap, thinly traded stocks on unsuspecting investors.
What are penny stocks
(INTEGRITY)
This Houston energy giant hid billions in debt in fake off the books partnerships, then collapsed in 2001 and took its accounting firm Arthur Andersen down with it.
What is Enron?
Who is the CEO of Scholars of Finance?
Who is Ross Overline
The FOMC meets eight times a year to decide this
What are interest rates
October 19, 1987, when the Dow fell about 22.6% in a single day, is remembered by this name.
What is Black Monday
Who is the investor, played by Christian Bale, in The Big Short that discovered that the U.S. housing market was built on risky subprime mortgages.
Who is Michael Burry
(COMPASSION)
This former CEO raised the price of a life saving drug by about 5,000% overnight in 2015, from $13.50 to $750 a pill. He's currently a free man, but is now banned from ever running a publicly traded company.
Who is Martin Shkreli?
What was the Mio's Trivia Night first place reward we were SCAMMED out of in the Spring 2025 Semester?
What is a pool
Private equity firms love this kind of deal, where they buy a company using mostly borrowed money
What is an LBO (Leveraged Buyout)
Before SpaceX IPO'd and took the crown, raising $75 billion, this Saudi oil giant held the record for largest IPO of all time, raising $29 billion in 2019.
What is Saudi Aramco
Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey, and Jeremy Irons star in this 2011 film set over one frantic night at a Wall Street firm on the brink of the 2008 crisis.
What is Margin Call
(Humility)
Run by two Nobel Prize winning economists equipped with the newly introduced Black-Scholes model, this hedge fund was so sure of its models that it levered up massively, then needed a Fed organized bailout in 1998.
What is Long Term Capital Management (LTCM)?
(Double points for both)
Who is Ian Spence or Grady Wilson
Trading for hundreds of thousands of dollars a share, this is the most expensive stock ticker in America because its company has never done a stock split. (give the exact 4 letter stock ticker)
What is BRK.A
On Black Wednesday in 1992, this hedge fund manager bet billions against the British pound, forced the UK out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and pocketed over $1 billion, earning the nickname "the man who broke the Bank of England."
Who is George Soros
In both this famous 1983 hero movie and 1999 comedy, the plots are driven by schemes to skim fractions of cents off every transaction from the companies, Webscoe Industries and Initech respectively. What are (at least one of) the the movies this scheme is featured in.
What is Superman 3 or Office Space
(Excellence)
Part of JPMorgan's $6 billion London Whale loss was blamed on a risk model built in this program, where a formula divided by a sum instead of an average.
What is Microsoft Excel?
Previously, SoF used to have 6 core values. Including 3 of our current ones (Integrity, Compassion, and Humility). Name at least 1 of the other 3 retired values. (Double points for all 3)
What is Curiosity, Impact, or Courage
A company is funded 60% by equity costing 10% and 40% by debt costing 5%, with a 25% tax rate. What is its WACC?
What is 7.5%?
0.6 × 10% = 6%
+ 0.4 × 5% × (1 − 0.25) = 1.5%
for a total of 7.5%
This famous mathematician and physicist almost went broke, when he jumped back into the South Sea Bubble right before it burst, reportedly saying he could calculate the motions of the heavens but not the madness of people
Who is Isaac Newton
Michael Douglas won the Oscar for Best Actor playing the greedy antagonist to Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox character in the classic finance movie, Wall Street.
(All of the Above)
He lied to investors for decades (integrity), wiped out charities including Elie Wiesel's foundation (compassion), faked steady returns instead of earning them (excellence), and used his status as a former NASDAQ chairman to avoid scrutiny (humility).
Resulting in the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
Who is Bernie Madoff?
When SoF opened it's chapter here at UC we started with 2 Co-Presidents because one of them was away on study abroad for the entire 2023-2024 school year. Who were they? (You must name both)
Who is Lance Entsuah and Nathan Rudnick