How much of the movie was real ? -I can tell you the whole scene with the KZI firm was basically re-enacting Lehman Brothers with a lot of parts being true (the meetings with governement, 700 trillion dollars asked for, moral hazard keyword being thrown around, having no idea how deep the toxic assets go, mention of Long-Term Capital Management bailout of 1998) and a whole bunch of other parts which were made up. -a lot of the terms thrown around: CDS, ABS, CDO, SIV etc. are real terms and mentioning that a major problem with the banks is over-leveraging. -the mentiong by Gordon Gekko of the tulip economic bubble is true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania But the parts I can’t confirm are the parts related to the job: 1. there was a mention that Shia LeBoeuf will start at 300k at the new firm, normal for an associate, since even partners make only 600k (there was an article recently on AF about something to this effect…that Goldman partners dont make tons of money for base salary), is that the standard base salaries in real life? -an energy trader shocked to get a 1.45 million bonus…really? dont energy traders make bonuses that big ? -and what as his job really…at times he was sitting on a trading desk looking at his bloomberg terminal, at other times he was in project financing for his alternative energy company, and other times he was in sell-side making recommendations to buy a certain stock…does anyone ever have a job this diverse in the REAL world ?
I think the original plot was to demonize a hedge fund guy. They probably carried over the hedge fund attributes of the job (because it’s facking cool) and made Shia be the jack (and master) of all trades.
I expected something much more cooler than personal account trading to bring down Bretton James, that was just so noob-ish, and publishing a story to bring down most powerful man on wall street… again, so noob-ish!
How realistic was that fusion energy company?
CFAMaven Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 1. there was a mention that Shia LeBoeuf will > start at 300k at the new firm, normal for an > associate, since even partners make only 600k > (there was an article recently on AF about > something to this effect…that Goldman partners > dont make tons of money for base salary), is that > the standard base salaries in real life? > -an energy trader shocked to get a 1.45 million > bonus…really? dont energy traders make bonuses > that big ? > -and what as his job really…at times he was > sitting on a trading desk looking at his bloomberg > terminal, at other times he was in project > financing for his alternative energy company, and > other times he was in sell-side making > recommendations to buy a certain stock…does > anyone ever have a job this diverse in the REAL > world ? Saw the movie yesterday and it seemed to me that they just threw in a lot of fancy seeming aspects of Wall Street in order to try to create some Hollywood sizzle. Shia is both a trader and an investment banker? That makes no sense, and if here were really that talented, he would be running some kind of hybrid PE / HF firm and making more than $1.4M. There are jobs like that where you make investments in various publicly traded stocks and also engage in private equity financings, but nothing moves as fast and effortlessly as they made it look in this film. Basically, I think it is hard to make a movie about Wall St. that will not bore the public to death in the first five minutes, so they have to take all the sexiest and extreme parts of the Street and condense it down the smallest, most consumable form. Other things that were interesting: - Gekko turning $100M into $1.1B or whatever in the span of a matter of months (wow!) - No resolution to the margin account fiasco (what, he didn’t ever have to pay that back?) Maybe I missed it. - That the CEO of this public company would base his entire (already flimsy) business model on some kid promising to get him $100M of capital? Really? - Shia speaks Chinese (whaaaat?) - Probably lots of other stuff. This movie was a stretch all around.
bromion Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > - Shia speaks Chinese (whaaaat?) I really lol’ed in that scene. Rumors plunging stocks in few minutes, even when that rumor is spread by some kid in a bankrupt wall street firm… really? A young oil trader, who only got 1.5 million in bonus in a bankrupt firm going into Goldman Sach’s CEO’s office and showing him attitude like there’s no bad@ss trader like him on wall street… really? That guy used an offshore fund to trade and a story about this on some random website made everyone from SEC to Fed to believe this without any proof, wtf? And what’s the obsession of story writer with rumors!
> I think the original plot was to demonize a hedge fund guy. They probably carried over the hedge fund attributes of > the job (because it’s facking cool) and made Shia be the jack (and master) of all trades. You are right ASSet_Man, the original story was more towards hedge funds then the economic crisis according to Wikipedia: At the party Stone and LaBeouf discussed the financial collapse with Roubini and also discussed hedge fund managers, who are clients of Roubini’s firm. Roubini said that “in this financial crisis it was the traditional banks and the investment banks that had a larger role in doing stupid and silly things than the hedge funds.”[43] Stone also stated that he had conversations with Jim Chanos, a prominent hedge fund manager who had urged him to focus less on hedge funds and more on the banking system, Chanos said, “there was a much more important story, a bigger story, in what happened with the system.” > How realistic was that fusion energy company? Good point…a lot of make-believe stuff.
Jesus Christ, it was Fing entertainment. Take it for what it’s worth. It was and wasn’t realistic–most movies have holes in them. It’s not a law of physics for Chrissake. It is just entertainment with a dash of history and a moral lesson. It’s just an Fing moving.
I was also wondering about the whole margin thing with the KZI shares. Also, why was his broker also sitting on a trading floor?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/insider’s-review-wall-street-money-never-sleeps It seems like no one can pin down what exactly Shia’s job was. I definitely thought he was a prop trader, NOT an investment banker (although he was working for an investment bank.)
it was a movie and not a documentary where everything need to make sense.
It was a movie where Oliver Stone was trying to villanize and belittle wall street. If anything he just reinforced that the general public tries to villanize things they cannot understand/do not know much about. While maybe he was fair in targeting GS or the actions surrounding GS it’s not fair to lable Wall Street and finance as a whole as ‘evil’ when you cannot even iron out some simple wrinkles in a plot. If anything this was a bad love story.
Any CFA mention ?
^ he says MBA from top-10 > CFA
ASSet_MANagement Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > While maybe he was fair in targeting GS or the > actions surrounding GS it’s not fair to lable Wall > Street and finance as a whole as ‘evil’ when you > cannot even iron out some simple wrinkles in a > plot. > > If anything this was a bad love story. But most of the WS firms had toxic assets on their BS and had to face problems in 2008 so generalizing WS do make sense. As boston said, it was a movie and he can use his imagination.
pupdawg82 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ^ he says MBA from top-10 > CFA 2 thumbs dwon from me then !
If Shia worked at a hedge fund, it would be called, “Greenwhich - goes to sleep around 11, usually after Law & Order.” Not sexy. The Hedge Fund theory does work because the movie tries to pin the whole crisis on one guy instead of the entire industry being drunk at the wheel with greed and incompetent. I think KVI was a conglomerate of the highlights from both Lehman and Bear Sterns and Hell, even Madoff. The company gets bought for 2 bucks (well then 3). The next meeting was where it diverted with history a little - nobody collapses, they just all push the fed to back them up. So I think the editors realized that the public would only need to see one collapse to get that experience and the second one (Lehman) would be gratuitous. Also the movie treats buyers of credit default swaps as the losers in the collapse. Wouldn’t that be the people who underwrote them or hold the insurance liability? Can anyone explain the bird whistle?
^ clients and money flying away?
I think the bird whistle was pointless. It was supposed to be clever and funny, but wasn’t… sort of like the entire movie, come to think of it. There were a ton of random one off things in that movie that made no sense. I know some people say it’s entertainment, and that’s true, but that was bad entertainment, no excuses about it.
my fav part of the movie was when bud fox showed up