5 comments about The Wolf of Wall Street.

1. Some people are complaining about it not being more detailed about his deals and his rise to the top. well if you looked in the back of the book you would realized that there will be a second book. It was a great change of pace book. I thought it was very exciting. Some of it was so insane you almost couldnt believe it. I think the people that are saying this book was bad were expecting something completely different. I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the next one.



2. The even split between 1-start and 5-star reviews is very telling - you'll either love it or hate it, there seems to be very few in between. In short, the book is an over the top, fast paced, recount of non-stop drug abuse, sex, money laundering schemes, and stock manipulation. About halfway through the book I had to go online to confirm that this is, in fact, a non-fiction work - it reads more like a thriller.
   
   If you're looking for stock market know-how, this is not the book that will teach you that, albeit the "chop stock" machinations on top of which Belfort built his empire are definitely an interesting historical artifact. Instead, this is a great tale of the lifestyle of the "rich and dysfunctional".
   
   If you suspend your sense of reality, it is actually a quiet engaging book. Albeit personally, I am still shell-shocked from the thought that Belfort has lived and survived through all this.



3. If you loved Wall Street (the movie) and its cousins; loved Bonfire of the Vanities, American Psycho etc.; appreciate a good "bad man turns good" redemption story (but with plenty of full gorilla sick guy behavior before the redemption), you will love this book. I bought it and read the entire thing in one sitting. Jordan, if you're reading this review, the last few chapters brought me to tears. I am familiar with AA, drug addiction/Alcohol addiction and your 'voice" was both hilarious and endearing. I congratulate you. I am looking forward to your (hopefully) long writing career!



4. I actually worked for this company for about a month in the Bethesda, MD office in the summer of '93 and always swore the movie Boiler Room was modeled after this place. The parking lot was a car show with Lamborghini's, Ferrari's, Porsche's, etc. All they would talk about was the movie Wall Street. I made $200 a week to make cold calls from first thing in the morning until 8 at night. They wanted you to get 10 solid leads a day for your broker and they would close the deal after you qualified the client and found out how much they were working with in the market. If they didn't have $100k then you basically hung up on them. Really sad. Wasn't my cup of tea and to actually find out it was most likely the story Boiler Room was based on is just so bizarre. I would run into old coworkers and we would say the exact same thing about the irony between the movie and the company. I am glad that I wasn't a part of it as I couldn't get a lead to save my life since I hate cold calling.



5. I was surprised at how good this book was...it was exceptionally funny from start to finish and if you liked the movie Wall Street ("Greed is Good") and the book Liars Poker, you will love this book! This is definitely one of my Top 10 books ever read...considering what that guy has been through, it makes my (sometimes near death) life and financial experiences seem humorous! Great book to read on your holiday or during your run on treadmill in the corporate rat race!!! (Jordan - Thanks)

5 comments about Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle.

1. For those interested in investment banking, this is a good book to read. It gives an in depth(and very personal view)of investment banking on Wall Street. Very witty, satirical and critical.
   Positives: Very informative, insightful. Book is hard to put down. Negatives: Some parts are long-winded. Authors so obviously despise Wall Street that their negative accounts of W.S. lose credibility
   Overall, the book is a great read for those interested in I.B.



2. very funny, vivid and true to life description of the life of an associate in the investment company, highly recommended for those who work in investment banking and allied industries, you won't regret spending some time on reading this book!



3. This is a serious book that just happens to be supremely funny.
   
   Highly recommended.



4. The book is very easy and funny to read. Authors shows things in investment bank very trully. Very interesting to read for people who is going to become an investment banker.



5. This is a funny book no doubt. Its not written by writers and thus there is no rules of writing that have been followed which makes it funny.
   
   Even though some have said the life style is exaggerated (and maybe it is) but unless you are an I banker or part of the fraternity in some way, there is no way to denounce what has been written about the profession.
   
   I really think that while being a cautionary tale for fledging IBankers, this book is also a testament to the hard times they spend in pursuing their dreams. Some have the balls to go through to the end while others (like the authors) bail out when they cant take it anymore.
   
   In any case, this is a laugh a minute book with some witty writing. Reading it was a breeze !

5 comments about Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, from Wall Street to Dubai.

1. Even as a novel, it is not that well written. Mr. Mezrich is brilliant in selecting interesting topics to write about, but not brilliant enough to deliver.
   After reading this book, you will gain no insight in the trading and oil businesses. Spend your time on some other more worthwhile books.



2. A page turning book about a 25 year old guy from Harvard Business School who goes to work on the New York mercantile exchange trading oil. The book details his young and fast paced life, including the money, women, and exotic travel he encounters along the way. It takes you along in his journeys back and forth to Dubai (as part of an attempt to open an energy exchange there) and the opulence he encounters while there. I was fascinated by the authors accounts of the city, and it enabled me to paint a more complete picture of what has become a booming international destination.
   
   If you like this book, you might also enjoy The Wolf of Wall Street, which is in the same genre but arguably somewhat better written.



3. I picked up this book hoping it might be something on the order of "Liars Poker" or "Barbarians at the Gates" or "The Pay Pal Wars," books that imparted huge amounts of information about the businesses that they covered. Boy, was I ever disappointed.
   
   Mezrich's characters are suitable for comic books, the business concepts he imparts are perhaps the level that would be explained to fourth-graders on a field trip, and the plot is close to non-existent. I'd say his writing is boring but it seldom rises to that level.
   
   I trade futures and FOREX, so I know a bit about markets and finance. Most of the narrative-type business books I have read give me at least one or two important pieces of information about the business itself. What Mezrich imparts about the Merc can be put into a one-page pamphlet.
   
   I was most of the way through this piece of dreck when I realized what the point of this book was-- Mezrich is hoping to land a movie script. He tried to write it simple and shallow enough for Hollywood mogels to understand, and he tried to incorporate glitz and money and sex.
   
   Save your money, save your time-- skip this book. Mr. C.S.



4. The storyline is smoothly layed out and very real. Interesting book and I loved the "brining down the house" by this author as well.



5. this is a rather lame attempt of writing a fresh story about the trade of oil in Dubai. It is choppy and collge freshman like in its approach. I struggled thru this.

5 comments about Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Banker: And Other Baller Things You Only Get to Say If You Work On Wall Street.

1. Probably the funniest book I've ever read, even better than the blog. I read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. Twice as funny if you work in finance and know a lot about the industry, but nonetheless hilarious for anyone who isn't easily offended or can take a joke.



2. Having been a massive fan of the website the book was always going to be great fun! The guy who wrote it clearly got bullied at school..



3. I pity poor old "Leveraged Sellout", which would be the most wounding thing one could do to him ("one" being a person not blessed enough to work in front office advisory M&A at a bulge bracket investment bank), but only for his timing. After the events of September 2008 it's going to be a while before anyone preens about working in a Bulge Bracket investment bank on Wall Street. At this point (still in September 2008) there are only two left, one (Morgan Stanley) looking likely to go the way of all flesh in coming days (horror of all horrors courtesy of *Wachovia*!), and the last man standing, Messrs. Goldman, Sachs & Co, facing a very uncertain road ahead as an independent investment bank no matter how excellent its risk management, deal execution and intellectual capital may be.
   
   So I pity the anonymous "Leveraged Sellout" simply because, as a result of his timing, this excellent and brutally funny little book will either disappear into the same gaping void that claimed Bear Stears, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Lehman Brothers or, worse, be held up by moronic lefties as a poster child for everything that was wrong with Wall Street.
   
   It is no such thing. It's actually a riot - imagine a young Hunter Thompson or Tom Wolfe writing with verve about modern day Wall Street but not as an outsider or an ingenue, but fully steeped in the technical and cultural world of a 24 year-old master of the universe.
   
   I have no doubt that whoever wrote this was a genuine insider - the observations and devastatingly funny sending up of the minutiae (such as the distinction between IBD and FICC and importance of never using your mouse when manipulating a spreadsheet) would never be apparent to an outsider who hadn't done a significant stretch. I spent 7 years at a bulge bracket bank myself (as a lowly inhouse lawyer, resolutely in unglamorous back office), and but for the inevitable comic hyperbole, Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker rings very true. I loved every moment.
   
   So it's kind of a historical document, even though it is pure satire. It captures the zeitgeist, circa August 2008, and if you've had any interaction with the IB fraternity in their prime - that is, before the Sub-Prime got them, you'll find this hysterically funny.
   
   Olly Buxton



4. The US economy is in disarray. The dollar is depreciating. The Europeans are laughing at us. Wall Street's elitists are taking government handouts. Investment banking is dead. Capitalism is dead. Private equity IRRs are down owing to defunct credit markets. Lehman and Bear bankers are all jobless. Merrill evaporated to pixie dust. No longer is there any appeal to banking or private equity. How can one tout a profession that is all out of a job where bonuses are cut to zero? We are in a very sad state. It used to feel good to be a banker. Now being a banker means being on welfare. Government cheese. What a bunch of losers.



5. This book has some good selected moments, however, I would recommend Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle instead. It is consistently funnier and more accurate, painting a truer version of what it's really like to be a junior banker.

No comments about Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.

5 comments about One Up On Wall Street : How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market.

1. I thought this book was an abreviated version of the full book, however this book is actually a miniture ~2inch micro-pocket version of the full book. Text is full size, thus it only contains a very few high-level comments. I was hoping for a boiled-down version, but got mini-me.



2. I was going to do some online trading and bought this book too learn more about selecting stocks. Mr. Lynchs' statement that he considered himself successful if 6 out 10 stocks he selected increased in value changed my mind. I want to thank him for waking me up. I will stick to index funds and wish all the online traders the best of luck.



3. I struggled with the 1st 74 pages or so, but after that this book is excellent. There is a section he titles Kicking the Tires, in short he goes over how to evaluate a company and to stay away from the 1-2 year fly away companies. I remember when everyone was selling Apple back in the day, Peter did the opposite and started gobbling up shares. As he somewhat states, the wheels on Apple were still good.



4. Peter Lynch wrote a classic with One Up on Wall Street. Peter Lynch was lead investment manager of the Magellan Fund, which is arguably the most successful large $ mutual fund in the US. He no longer manages the fund but in his book he lets us in on some of his secrets of choosing stocks.
   
   His approach is rather simple. Buy stock in something that you know. As a consumer and a personal investor we have the ability to know products before anyone on the street knows about them. For example he got in on the stock Yum Brands because he bought a Taco Bell burrito years ago when it first came out. He believed that their set up and approach would work and so he put some money into the company.
   
   His suggestions like listening to things Oprah likes are great simple tips that a typical investor may not even realize we have more information on than wall street on a daily basis. His book is a read for all investor types from beginner to advanced. Enjoy!



5. Amateur investors have "numerous built-in advantages, which, if exploited, should result in outperforming the market and the experts."
   
   Peter Lynch, America's number-one money manager of Fidelity's multibillion-dollar Magellan Fund, shows the layperson how to use what they already know to outperform the "experts" and to create investments on businesses that really matter.

5 comments about Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis.

1. This book in great detail tells the tale of the subprime bottom feeders and their links to equally greedy and bottom feeders on Wall Street. It's easy to read, and you start to understand how these loans were made-- quickly and without much regard to whether people could actually repay them. I would have liked to see the "chain" completed, however. We don't hear much about the home buyers and what they did or what happened to them--were they all deadbeats, as some say, or hapless naifs? And, at the other end, what were regulators doing? Surely, they must have had some thoughts about what was going on. I know at the time that consumer groups were screaming their heads off, and a few state legislatures tried to pass better regulations--but they were pre-empted from implementing them by the Office of Thrift Supervision an the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Of course, if the authors had covered all that, their book would have been bigger than the phone book, and they would still be writing. All in all, though, I thought it was riveting.



2. Until reading this book, it was difficult to see how bad home loans could bring down Wall Street. In an entertaining read, Muolo and Padilla tell the story.



3. This book was an easy read. I like the way the authors tried to keep it simple, which must've been a challenge. This whole crisis and why it happened, is not that simple to explain, so the average person, who's not in the world of high finance can understand. Muolo and Padilla did a good job breaking it down for us; exposing the culrpits involved and tried to give us an idea of what these guys were thinking. Obviously, they all swallowed that line from the movie Wall Street, "Greed is good", and paid a hefty price with other people's money.



4. This book clearly spells out what went wrong to precipitate the mortgage crisis that catapulted the financial markets into a global meltdown. The book uses simple language to describe complex concepts, which is very helpful to the financial novice like myself. In this sense, this book is wonderful.
   
   However, the book is way too long. Some whole paragraphs are repeated almost verbatim in different chapters. Each paragraph chronicles the life and times of another major mortgage company. While this concept is ok for telling stories about the individuals involved in the business, it makes for highly repetitive reading, as the mistakes made by one company are often made by others. The first 150 pages is a tough slog of similar people and similar stories, but the book picks up steam in the final 150.
   
   Finally, while this book does a great job of explaining the mortgage industry and their role in the financial crisis, the authors make a cursory explanation of what truly happened on the Wall Street side of things. (This isn't too unexpected because the authors are mortgage experts.) For example, there is basically no mention of the subsequent credit crunch that was precipitated by the sub-prime mortgage disaster.
   
   For a good explanation of what went wrong on the Wall Street side of things, I recommend 'The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash'. That book is not an easy read, because the author expects the reader to have a solid understanding in Wall Street lingo. But 'Chain of Blame' is a useful primer.



5. This book tells it like it is. It's clear, well ordered, and very readable. But it's a little scary to realize how greed can control a country like ours.

5 comments about A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition.

1. The book is otherwise fabulous, but you should steer clear of the Kindle version. The Kindle handles charts poorly, and this book has a lot of them. Some are manageable, but many others contain small text that is so blurry that it might as well be written in Arabic. Quite honestly, it is not entirely clear to me how Amazon gets away with selling this item. The Kindle is great, but Amazon absolutely should not sell books that cannot actually be read on it.



2. This book helps to understand how the shares market works and its history.
   
   I think it may interest all people who wants to improve his knowleadge in
   
   investing.



3. Would have give it 5 stars,except for the fact that they did not return my e-mail, when I had a question



4. As a novice to finance, I found this book both educational and entertaining. Highly recommended!



5. Very good book, the author takes you behind the scene of Wall Street and history of the market. He goes over the basics of our economy and the different avenues of investing. This is a must read for anyone who want to start investing but is confused on where to start. I would have given this book 5 stars if he had written down a step by step process to investing. I recommend this book 1st and then read Jim Cramer's Mad Money, he gives the step by step procedures I was looking for in his book.

5 comments about Wall and Piece.

1. Banksy is a great artist. This book is 240 pages of both his graffiti and his "gallery" or more "Piece" art. I think he is an innovator and inspiration to all artists. We could all learn something from Banksy. If you like this book you might also like some Shepard Fairey work. Also check out Banksy's website at http://www.Banksy.co.uk its really great.



2. Couldn't put it down. Images are mezmerizing. Everyone I show it to wants to buy it to. No profanity or sexually oriented photos make it a hip gift choice for young people.



3. there isn't much to read. the art speaks for itself.
   6 sections to this book:
   monkeys, cops, rats, cows, art, and street furniture.
   there are a few pages that contain several paragraphs of writing. banksy provides captions for maybe.. approximately half or less than half of his art. towards the back there's one page with "advice on painting with stencils". if you were looking for graffiti instruction, look elsewhere... unless you really want to look at that one page haha. some of his famous quotes are in there.
   what a funny guy. funny book. it was worth the money :)



4. You have to check out this book if you can appreciate the art that is graffiti. Banksy also inspires you with his political satire.



5. I have this book on my desk. Every loves it and I think its very creative and it approaches graffiti as an art rather and in a different point of view. Banksy must be a very smart or weird guy.

5 comments about Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street.

1. Michael Lewis describes his corner of wall street pretty well. The 1980s bond market. He continually contrasts the practice and culture of trading bonds with the dogma of Economics.
   
   Over the course of the book it becomes easy to draw parallels between Wall Street and Feudal Europe. The Economists are like the Catholic Church in Feudal Europe. The Traders are like the Nobles and Royalty in Medieval Europe. The Job of the Nobles is to fight other Nobles over the right to control land, rent, and protection fees. The Job of the Church is to teach people who aren't Nobles that they should do what the Nobles tell them to. In exchange, the Church will occasionally ask the Nobles to behave a little better.



2. This book was so inspirational and superb it may have changed my life. It changed my perspective on things and it was so funny and enlightening it in a way contributed to helping me go from a Junior Manager in a Fortune 500 company to Head of Division with responsibility over 15 countries in an International Fortune 500 Company...a must read for any MBA or graduate diving into the corporate rat race and wanting to know - is anything possible? the answer is yes. Depends how you do it...A great read. Thanks!



3. Anyone looking for an idea of what its like to work at an investment bank MUST read this book.



4. This was a pretty good book because it tells you things that make you want to keep listening, it holds your attention. You will learn some things from this book. The only bad thing about this book that i didnt like was how the author occasionally went off on unusual/complicated tangents when describing things. The kind of sentences you have to read atleast 3 times.....but i still recommend it. FIASCO was also very good.
   
   sayanora



5. First half = interesting. Second half = kinda boring. Lewis has inspired me to write a better insider's account of Wall Street.