I just watched Wolf of Wall Street (2013) by Martin Scorsese, a biopic movie based on a memoir written by Jordan Belfort.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill
Plot
The movie is about the real world case of Stratton Oakmont and the adventure of Jordan Belfort in building his wealth. He started as a stock broker at L.F. Rothschild, and when the company closed, he started to be involved in trading penny stocks, a market so tiny that it is unregulated at that time. He quickly get rich by the 50% commission trading fee, with numerous illegitimate pressure tactics, and "pump and dump" schemes. He eventually moved up and establish his own firm Stratton Oakmont, Inc. with the help of unlikely gang of friends, and aimed even higher. He frequently gets into comedic situation over his addiction to drugs, sex, and partying. His ability in persuading and manipulating people gave him the early success, but it will eventually lead to his own downfall, when all of his illegal activities are uncovered one by one.
Theme
It is a black comedy, a satire, and most of the plot are simplified or maybe fictionalized, but it is all according to real Jordan Belfort's memoir. And according to him, the words like "fuck," "asshole," *insert genital references* "sucker" dominates the air of brokerage room. Abuse of prescription drugs is shown liberally throughout the entire film, snorting cocaine, aggressive intake of quaaludes, and the comedic "high" antiques and the situation it produced. The movie deliberately showed inconsistencies, like the colour of the cars, the mistaken progress of the plots (as narrated by Jordan himself), or even details like the number of stair steps as to illustrated the influence of drugs.
So this movie kinda nods to typical American setup, similar to the legendary "Wall Street" (1987) movie starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, who attracted many young men into the Wall Street, including Dick Fuld (former CEO of Lehmann Brothers). Another Hollywood attempt at making US a funner place. After what they done with American history and its military capability, now it is their financial market's turn. It also approximately showed and guided nouveau rich on how to blow their money: drugs, trophy wife, super cars, mansions, yacht, and crazy parties. I literary read a Wall Street roller candidate asking if he can earn millions of dollars by landing a job there, before even graduated, right, reward before toil. Really, stay classy America, and keep learning from movies and Hollywood celebrities.
Verdict
A quite entertaining movie. I rate it at 7 out of 10. Coming from Martin Scorsese who typically manufactures epicly boring epic movies, this is quite a completely another direction from his usual boring-ness. My siblings who both worked in financial institutions (but none are brokers) quite like it. They freely laughs at most gags, deeming it to be pretty silly and "stuff of movies." I also read that Goldman-Sachs bankers cheered on several events of the movie, especially when Jordan rips off his hidden stash of cocaine and take huge dosage after a period of rehab. I guess they wanted to either mock the comical side of the movie or show how they want to "cling on" that hard into their dreams, even after the situation turned sour, like Jordan Belfort did. Critics are quite positive, but not so about the general audiences.
Fact vs. Fiction (Wall of text)
There are of course, inaccuracies shown in the movie. I can't help but I believe this movie reinforces that "occupy Wall Street" movement's stereotype about the people there. While most of my experience talking to other professional certification candidate in this industry does give me similar impression (mostly in US), but in most other places, I found out that it is entirely different.
You cannot simply "IPO" a company without serious stock pitching backed with reliable analysts. It seems that the movie only portrays Stratton Oakman's boiler room of telemarketing stock brokers. They don't show their other operations or how things were done. Clearly, these Stratton Oakman were predators to the low-medium income people, which are financially illiterate (as opposed to targeting "rich people," hence Jordan's decision to establish the firm and the name as explained in the movie). I could imagine how devastating the effect for their victims at that time. And ripping of 50% out of client's money is too much, and you are way too stupid if you fell into this scheme. This is however, confirmed by Wikipedia and had happened indeed (as well as the Forbes article). Nowadays, even 1% is considered high, as comparison, my broker only charged me 0.35% at sell and 0.25% at buy.
In real-life, calls from brokers or sell-side traders/analyst are usually for informing long time institutional investors about trends. My brother says that it is mostly them (the buyers) who made the call and ask "buy or sell" with the seller reluctantly answer or declining at all. Calls typically last very long and boring, with the conversation dominated by them talking and us listening. But time has changed, really. These highly-paid people really have no time for such low-volume, but high-commission transactions, which are clearly not a legitimate well-established firm's palate. Unless you are talking about hedge fund and all that shit, they are somewhat unregulated. But in the US, which has a lot of weird legislation, even those protecting their own stupidity (like Toyota brake problems), there's just too many prey and this things are too lucrative that they won't go away. Even the rich people who mistakenly invest in this kind of dubious products wanted to be protected from their stupidity, so imagine how are the other masses of poor, low-educated people.
So as a middle-class, blue collar, hard worker, my idea of fun is to get wasted as much as I can. So if we have more money, then we'll party harder right? Work hard, party hard? Well, if you are into expensive and alcoholic drinks (cocktails and bar stuffs) to get stoned to have fun, most of the colleagues in that industry will gossip about you and generally regards you as "not having a hobby." Yeah, it happened for real in one of major financial institution here, which (not surprisingly) employed the highest proportion of people educated in University in the state of New York.
People with a lot of money typically enjoys better access to their hobby (some of which they can't afford first), so it is not always drugs, prostitutes, gambling, and other typically Hollywood and American celebrity kind of "fun." For example, most of the guys in Indonesian "Wall Street" typically enjoy taking holidays at exotic places, which is kinda boring hobby. But some have interesting hobbies like collecting antics, paintings, and other art works that worth million dollars. One of the bosses I know enjoyed scuba diving, and with that huge extra money, he traveled to many weird places across the globe just to do his hobby.
So how about the, Ferraris/Lamborghinis? Well, Mazda 6 and Hyundai H-1 are what my siblings' bosses drive (or driven in, since H-1 is a huge van). Hell, my friend at JP Morgan took subways everyday and does figurine-collecting as a hobby.
