The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Trader's Film Library #14 · Markets and trading in fiction. Great cinema, a terrible role model.

Original title: The Wolf of Wall Street · Type: film · Created by: Martin Scorsese · Usefulness for traders: ★★★☆☆

What it's about

The story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his firm Stratton Oakmont, which in the 1990s made money selling penny stocks and manipulating prices. Based on Belfort's memoirs.

What it has to do with markets

The pump-and-dump mechanism is shown faithfully: artificially driving up demand for illiquid shares and selling them to clients at an inflated price. But the film is mainly about a culture of excess and its consequences.

Lessons for traders

• small, illiquid companies are easy to manipulate
• the person selling you an opportunity earns from the commission, not from your profit
• having no limits ends in disaster, in trading too (the house money effect, Atlas of biases #37)

What to watch out for

Many viewers take the film as an endorsement of the main character's lifestyle. It's the story of a criminal who robbed his clients.

The book

I review the book this title is based on in the Trader's Library: 📚 Library #012 · Belfort: The Wolf of Wall Street and his later books.

Discussion

The discussion takes place in Hetman Capital Club (in Polish). Join the discussion in the Club →

Navigation

← #13 Capital · Film Library index · #15 Money Monster →

The description outlines the plot without revealing the ending where possible (true stories have a known outcome). Educational content, not investment advice.