Customer Reviews

Riding the Bull:: My Year in the Madness at Merrill Lynch

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

... The author was not naive as some reviews have said, but too principled and idealistic for the shenanigans of Merrill Lynch bond trading. It's true he had taken on the heady challenge, but what he met was beyond his wildest imaginings. His expectations of even a little job training were never met. One senses how truly lost he was in this deceitful and morally ambiguous environment. What the hell was expected? What was the game? On the one hand, you can learn a lot about daily life on the bond trading floor. On the other hand, having been in the corporate life myself, I recognized some similar behavior and wished I could have read this book prior to those experiences. I was more lost than Mr. Stiles and just as infuriated. Anyone planning to go to the corporate wars will be forewarned by reading this book. Let it be a lesson to those who think corporate tigers could run the world better than politicians. For awhile, Stiles played the game and made $1 million for the company and may have enjoyed the heady success of that time, but overall it wasn't worth it. I liked the format. Just when I'd had enough of technical market information and bad behavior, Stiles shifts to more personal things--finding an affordable, livable place within commuting distance of Wall Street; a visit to the city by his parents and a heart-to-heart talk with his father; a desperate altercation with his equally stressed career wife; and walking The Beast, their Jack Russell terrier. Read this book and have your eyes opened to what really goes on where greed is king. Stiles was there when the Mexican peso was devalued. He reveals the inside scoop on the Orange County debacle. This is good stuff. And well-written, too

Here's a man who decides suddenly he wants a career on The Street. In high finance. He freely admits at the time he decided he wanted to be a bond trader he didn't even know what a bond was, let alone how to trade one. Kind of like deciding you want to be an auto mechanic when you've never seen a car, or a concert pianist when you've never touched a C. But worse, he never researched the industry. Okay, he called one college chum he knew on the inside. Hardly research. Had he looked deeper than the piles of green he perceived on the horizon, he might not have been surprised later to learn that stockbrokers and bond traders don't spend their off-time thinking about philosophy, art, theater, history and most of all, ethics. What did he expect on the trading floor, discourses on Shakespeare and Proust amidst the hectic buying and selling. The one worthwhile part of the book is his sobering discussion of how trading swindles and corporate blackmail go unreported on the nightly news, because most everyone things--probably rightly so!--that the average person is "too dumb" to understand what's going on. Give people the Mexican Peso crash or the Orange County scandal and their eyes glaze over, but show videotape of Monica Lewinsky hugging the president and interest perks up. So long as the average person behaves this way, people like the characters Stiles paints in his book will continue to rob us blind. Bread and circuses is not much of a stretch. Otherwise this is a long read, and in the forward he mentions it was TWICE as long in its original draft. I can only shudder to think what that version read like. The ending is very soppy and cloying in its own way--I really find it a stretch that those conversations took place on his living room couch, complete with side-remarks to their too-cute doggie. It felt like one of the whinier episodes of "Thirtysomething," only in "Thirtysomething" the dialogue was better (believe it or not). In short, save your money. And let Stiles earn an honest living.

I recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of becoming a trader. My experience with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong are very similar to those of the author's, and with all the other associates I talked to, it seems that it is more a common practise than a mismanagement to neglect newly recruited analysts and associates, especially those who do not have contacts high up in the firm. I am pleased to find out I am not the only one who is working for a top investment bank and deeply depressed, broke and hated every minute of it, and finally someone write a book about it.

Stiles made it a year in the derivatives business. What I found surprising was that he made into Merrill Lynch at all. Here was a guy who hasn't even taken his series 7 and he's wondering why he's completely lost.

The lack of communication apparent in Merrill Lynch is unfortunate, but no different than other large finance companies (I can attest to that.) I found it hard to understand why the bureaucracy drove Stiles nuts considering his previous job was with the government. Rather than explain it as it was, I couldn't help but think Stiles was looking for someone to point the finger at. It seemed to me the truth behind the corporate culture lies more along the lines of "we don't care what you do as long as it makes money." The "Latin Mafia" and the rest knew this and were playing the game using the cards they were dealt.

What I did enjoy were his escapades (or lack thereof) outside of work. Sorry New-Yorkers, even though I was born there, I cannot understand why anyone would choose to live there and this book reinforces the opinion. Stiles did a great job of conveying life in the Big Apple, from the sense of tension just getting to and from work, the rationalizations that come out when crime hits close to home, to a valid summary of why a dual income family making over $100K a year still has nothing to show for it. (Any Brooklynite reading this is probably thinking, "if you don't like it... leave" which is exactly the point.)

Whereas "Liar's Poker" is probably overly congratulatory, "Riding the Bull" is overly accusatory. I'm not sure if the author needed to sell his soul to continue working at Mother Merrill, but he should've realized he might have to make that decision before he took the job.

Every now and then you come across a really inspiring rags-to-riches tale of Wall Street, a story of a streetwise poor kid full of ambition, raw brains, and moxie, who risks it all, works like a demon, and makes big money in the financial jungle.

This is not one of them.

Paul Stiles, Harvard grad, smart dude, worked at the National Security Agency for five years: by about 1994, he'd decided "good enough for government work" wasn't good enough for him. North of his little cottage near Annapolis, the trenches and bunkers of Manhattan, a great battle---fought with derivatives, and tranches of collateralized debt, and high-yield instruments of death and destruction---was being fought: a war with, potentially, far greater ramfications for the United States than all the post-Cold War subterfuge for pennies wielded in Washington DC.

So he did what all of us Wall Street hopefuls have done, once upon a time: he road the shuttle north, an interviewed like a banshee.

The first thing you'll pick up in "Riding the Bull" is the verve of the writing: Stiles has a gift for words, for framing a scene, for setting up Manhattan in the mid-nineties, in the heat of the Bull Market, and Stiles---after the agony of inquisitorial, mercurial, stress-driven interviews masterminded by the newest lords of the manor, the calculus-fuelled quants---secured a plum role in emerging markets debt at Merrill Lynch, whose sigil and symbol---the rampant bull---was emblematic of that intoxicating, wild-eyed age.

Stiles, then, is an alien---or an ape, your choice---in this brave new world of bond trading, the Mexican sovereign crisis, the convergence of High Finance, High Octane, and Super-Duper international skullduggery.

Oh, with a little aside on the craziness of trying to settle down in Brooklyn, New York, 20th century, on a pittance of 100 grand a year. Sheesh.

Now: as I said, Stiles has a gimlet eye: of his work in the trenches at Merrill, as he was handed a nasty, thankless assignment as, effectively, a minister without portfolio, a trader without a country, a hapless Gringo amid the so-called Latin Mafia that ran the South America debt operations---how he tried, failed, tried again, and got sacked---trying to carve out his own little kingdom in the jungle of the Bull.

It's fun reading. It's scandalous, witty, engaging, capable of beoing devoured on a red-eye flight from Boston to LA, and consummately engaging.

Moralistic? Possibly. Stiles nails the pyschology of Manhattan, the city that grows up, not out. An island with skeletal coastal development? Go figure, in a place where the eyes look to the sky, not to the sea.

Some might complain that a one-year tour of duty on Wall Street hardly qualifies for the jeremiad that is "Riding the Bull", but I disagree: in the wake of Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Adelphia, and countless other Wall Street turmoils, "Riding the Bull" is a merciless little piece of pungent journalism, a fly-on-the-wall in America's boardrooms where the caviar is probably laced with salmonella and the Crystal is jacked up with arsenic.

Here be Dragons.

JSG

While the book alludes to the many problems on Wall Street, I was struck by the author's lack of true introspection. Superficially he sees his own faults leading to his downfall, but it appears that this was a person who simply lacked the ability to work with others. Faced with failure, he did the easy thing: blamed "the System" and others around him.

Overall very disappointing (and painful) read and certainly NOT in the same vein as other quality books about the Street.

Paul Stiles' whining gets on your nerves after a while. If "standard" Merrill training genuinely is no training...yet Merrill possesses one of the best trading arms in the world...the vast majority of the recruits must've been smart enough to pick things up as they went along, which seems to indicate a shortcoming in Stiles rather than the system. It's unfortunate but understandable that Stiles lacked the ability or intestinal fortitiude to excell in what is an extremely difficult (both mentally and emotionally) position. However, it is even more unfortunate that he blames society and those around him for his own greed-driven decisions, making this book a exemplary whine-fest. The only redeeming feature: some relatively interesting asides about the technical aspects of a trading desk. Read Liar's Poker (Lewis, non-fiction) or The Bombardiers (Bronson, fiction) for much better and more entertaining Wall Street bedtime stories.

The only similarity between this book and Liar's Poker is that they are both about Wall Street. Rather than blame himself for seeking out and then accepting a job he knew he was ill-prepared for, in a city he knew nothing about, Stiles blames everyone and everything else. This, in essence, is why Stiles never made it. NYC and Wall Street are not the types of places for people who are always waiting for something to come to them - you have to go out and get it.

Stiles book has some interesting passages, though it is very clear that he still does not understand why it didn't all work out. Despite the fact that he was "never trained", his passages about the Mexican Peso devaluation and the Orange County Scandal are good summaries. If you work on Wall Street, this book will be entertaining. If you are thinking of working on Wall Street and are as naive as Stiles about "the life", this book will be useful. Otherwise, take a pass and read Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker.

I like to pride myself that I have never started a book and not finished it, but this one came very close to breaking the streak.

What I envisioned was a moving expose of breaking into the Wall Street fraternity (a la Liar's Poker). Reality was excessant whining on how people weren't nice and were too greedy. Go figure...on Wall Street.

The most irritating part of the whole book is that the author obtained his job through the same trickery which he bashes for 300+ pages in the book, but never acknowledges that the others were simply better at the ruse than him. Rather, he waxes prophetic on how his life has a higher meaning. It's just not even close to believable.

I disagree with many of these reviews, but this is understandable. Many of these readers had the wrong expectations. When I read this book I was surprised by what I found. This book is about a man who goes to Wall Street and realizes that there is more to human life than serving what he calls the Market. It is an awakening for him, as a young man, and he tries to identify why it is that such important insights into life have been hidden, what other messages he has unwittingly accepted from his (American) society. This is a difficult topic for anyone to explore, especially first hand. I agree the author reaches his limit at the end, but the trip there is worth taking. As a European Catholic, rarely have I read an American author who so clearly sees the problems with his own capitalist excess and its impact on the soul. Unfortunately, there are many who have not reached this level of awareness, and some are found in Mr. Stiles reviews. The tragedy is that such an honest book of the human spirit should be lost among books on finance, where it is judged by those who are predisposed not to understand it.