Series 65 Practice Questions: 3 Samples and What to Drill in Each Section

Practice questions are most useful for finding what you do not know yet. This guide gives three original questions to try, one each from three of NASAA's four sections, then what is worth drilling in each section, the pace the real exam asks for, and how to read a practice score. ProSyllabus is an independent study site, not part of NASAA, FINRA or Prometric. The facts here are quoted or summarised from the official pages listed under Sources. FINRA administers the exam; for licensing and registration questions, check with the relevant state securities regulator. Nothing on this page is investment advice: securities products and strategies appear here only as exam content.

FINRA Series 65 page (read 25 Oct 2026) and NASAA Series 65 test specifications.

Each question below is original, written to the components in NASAA's outline. Work it out before you open the answer.

NASAA sets how many scored questions each section gets. The drill list below is ours, built from the components NASAA lists; it is not NASAA's list of what appears on any exam.

NASAA lists concepts and methods here, so expect both definitions and short calculations: which phase of the business cycle a description fits, what a rise in interest rates does to bond prices, a current or quick ratio from a few balance sheet figures, or what a beta above 1 says about a stock. Our suggestion: practise the short calculations until you can check your own arithmetic quickly.

This section covers fourteen components, from Treasury bills to digital assets. The common thread is features and risks: how a product is priced, taxed and sold, what can go wrong for the holder, and how one product differs from a close neighbour (open-end and closed-end funds, ETFs and ETNs, fixed and variable annuities).

Here the outline moves from products to clients: the client profile, the tax and retirement rules that shape a recommendation, forms of account ownership, and how performance is measured. Our suggestion: practise client scenarios that ask which strategy, account or measure fits, and read the client facts in the stem carefully before looking at the options.

The law section draws on the Uniform Securities Act of 1956 as NASAA amended it, NASAA model rules and statements of policy, and the federal acts and SEC rules the study guide names. Definitions and their exclusions do a lot of work: who is an investment adviser, a representative, a broker-dealer or an agent, and which securities and transactions are exempt. NASAA notes that a question may test a rule without naming it.

The real Series 65 gives you 180 minutes for 140 questions, 10 of which are unscored pretest questions you cannot identify. That is about 77 seconds a question (our arithmetic). A simple way to check your pace in a timed practice test is to note the clock at fixed points:

If you are well behind at the halfway mark, you are probably spending too long on questions you cannot work out. Choose your best answer, mark it if your test lets you, and move on.

The real pass mark is at least 92 of the 130 scored questions, and NASAA says it is not a percentage. A score on someone else's practice questions is not a Series 65 result and does not predict one: use it to see which sections cost you marks. NASAA also notes that the sections are weighted differently, so you cannot average section scores to get an overall result.