Kappa Beta Phi (ΚΒΦ) is a secret society with at least one surviving chapter, based on Wall Street in New York City, that is made up of high-ranking financial executives.

Members were told that the society was established as an alternative to Phi Beta Kappa to allow young men to meet and share ideas in an atmosphere of pub conviviality rather than more formal and elitist salon discussions; its reversed Greek letters were purportedly chosen to reinforce the contrast.

The joking, at times rendered in poetic style, with cartoons, other illustrations, elaborate spoofs, and short news items were immensely popular, driving sales, and allowing the editors and contributors a rare opportunity to poke fun.

This phenomenon was virtually ubiquitous nationally throughout the 1870s until the Great Depression when the average yearbook became smaller, and more polite, dropping to perhaps half its size from just a few years earlier.

The most likely origin of Kappa Beta Phi, therefore, was as an inside joke, perhaps at Yale, Hobart, Minnesota, or Michigan, repeated immediately by other campus editors who heard of the idea and soon populated their chapters with actual members willing to appear in a photo or participate in a party or two.

The 1941 University of Miami Ibis yearbook noted that the letters Kappa Beta Phi stood for "Kursed by the Faculty", and referred to the same Welsh Tennyson motto that the Minnesota and Hobart chapters had previously used.

Some may have been in de facto existence, primarily on college campuses, or the bulk of these may have been an ongoing series of yearbook jokes, egged on by satiric-minded editors.

[8] Kappa Beta Phi's earlier motto, regularly stated in early 20th century yearbooks, was the Welsh phrase popularized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ygwir yn erbyn y byd", which in English means, "The truth against the world".

Backed by a five-piece band, the inductees performed renditions of well-known tunes with lyrics modified to satirize Wall Street.