7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I kept watching..., April 7, 2008
This review is from: Wall Street Warriors: Season 1 (DVD)
I trade stocks from home a little bit and the show inspired me. Best parts were the trading floors, Alex and Tim turning $16,000 into $1.5 million. It doesn't get very detailed on the technical side of finance, which I guess is good because that would be kind of boring. I've caught a few episodes of the new season on TV - it's pretty entertaining, especially the 28-year-old Hedge-fund Manager who runs a $100 million fund - Damn! I got to go back to school!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A disappointing documentary look at Wall Street insiders, August 8, 2008
This review is from: Wall Street Warriors: Season 1 (DVD)
This show was based on a series of interviews with various Wall Street folks.
While somewhat interesting in places, overall I was disappointed.
Any advice about investing or success on Wall Street was extremely vague, and mostly sounded like standard business platitudes.
The common theme from the traders shown was that their job life is frenetic. The pace and style is, ironically, exactly opposite the tried and true methodology for the vast majority of successful INVESTORS (i.e. as opposed to speculators) - as described by legendary folks like John Bogle and Warren Buffett.
Timothy Sykes, a day trader who had made a killing in the post-internet market collapse (as a microcap short biased trader -- he was obviously in the right place at the right time) was a perfect example of the hyperactive, overconfident, and self-congratulatory 20-somethings that are playing the Wall Street game. These folks seem to have NO clue that making $10 million to $100 million on Wall Street by trading is about as realistic for 99++% of traders as the ghetto kid who is convinced he'll make the NBA by playing basketball instead of studying. I guess the youth get their drive from dreaming big.
(To his credit, Tim does admit he was lucky when he made his big gains). On the other hand, he talks about the need to control emotions, but is constantly very emotional when he trades and discusses his trading. He also seems completely random to me as he trades -- basically, he's a technician who gets his contrarian ideas from Wall Street and technical publications. Not exactly unique. Not exactly insightful, though apparently delusional.
Another common theme was an extreme attachment to wealth and the arrogance the taste of wealth (like a house in the Hamptons, a fancy car, and fancy food, etc) gained clearly implied -- that folks who couldn't afford such a thing are clearly inferior to the folks that can. I guess this is all too predictable, but I was hoping folks who are supposedly so brilliant or talented or socially in tune would have a BIT of perspective or social insight into how the world works.
Most of the folks, like a specialist or a futures floor trader just explained the basics of what their jobs entail. Nothing insightful there at all.
I was hoping to get some meaningful insight into what some of the truly genius folks on Wall Street do and how they think. maybe some useful insight into what to read or how to do research (more sophisticated than seeing how prevalent a brand of blue jeans are in certain stores).
If you are an investor looking to actually learn something - take a big pass on this title.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoy that 15 minutes, Timmy?, August 21, 2007
This review is from: Wall Street Warriors: Season 1 (DVD)
Nice to see that the once-hot Tim Sykes enjoyed his little brush with fame, but as the respected "Trader" magazine publishes the 2007 list of "Hottest Traders Under 30," our sad little Timmy is nowhee to be found. Quoting from the magazine's lead paragraph:
"You won't see Cilantro's humility-challenged Tim Sykes, who in the past year has gone from wunderkind to Ryan Leaf-like laughingstock."
[...]
(Ryan Leaf, for those non-football fans, was the second pick in the 1998 NFL draft -- behind Peyton Manning -- who was such a bust he was out of the league only a few years later.)
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
