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The Wolf of Wall Street [Paperback]

Jordan Belfort
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (138 customer reviews)

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Book Description

August 26, 2008
By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called…

In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess no one could invent.
Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, Stratton Oakmont turned microcap investing into a wickedly lucrative game as Belfort’s hyped-up, coked-out brokers browbeat clients into stock buys that were guaranteed to earn obscene profits–for the house. But an insatiable appetite for debauchery, questionable tactics, and a fateful partnership with a breakout shoe designer named Steve Madden would land Belfort on both sides of the law and into a harrowing darkness all his own.

From the stormy relationship Belfort shared with his model-wife as they ran a madcap household that included two young children, a full-time staff of twenty-two, a pair of bodyguards, and hidden cameras everywhere—even as the SEC and FBI zeroed in on them—to the unbridled hedonism of his office life, here is the extraordinary story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down…


From the Hardcover edition.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Belfort, who founded one of the first and largest chop shop brokerage firms in 1987, was banned from the securities business for life by 1994, and later went to jail for fraud and money-laundering, delivers a memoir that reads like fiction. It covers his decade of success with straightforward accounts of how he worked with managers of obscure companies to acquire large amounts of stock with minimal public disclosure, then pumped up the price and sold it, so he and the insiders made large profits while public investors usually lost. Profits were laundered through purchase of legitimate businesses and cash deposits in Swiss banks. There is only brief mention of Belfort's life before Wall Street or events since 1997. The book's main topic is the vast amount of sex, drugs and risky physical behavior Belfort managed to survive. As might be expected in the autobiography of a veteran con man with movie rights already sold, it's hard to know how much to believe. The story is told mostly in dialogue, with allegedly contemporaneous mental asides by the author, reported verbatim. But it reports only surface events, never revealing what motivates Belfort or any of the other characters. (Oct. 2)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“A cocky bad boy of finance recalls ... [his] career as a master of his own universe.... A hell of a read.”—Kirkus Reviews


“A memoir that reads like fiction.... [concerning] the vast amount of sex, drugs and risky physical behavior Belfort managed to survive.”—Publishers Weekly


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 528 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam; Reprint edition (August 26, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0553384775
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553384772
  • Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (138 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

At times it just seems like he's trying too hard. MX Racer  |  31 reviewers made a similar statement
If I could have given this book review less than 1 star, I would have. craigderington  |  17 reviewers made a similar statement
This book is not well written, but it's a good read. D. A. Caputo  |  14 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
70 of 79 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Well, At Least He Loves Himself November 25, 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I love business/Wall Street books as I work at a regional investment firm. Also, the movie "Boiler Room" is one of my favorites and supposedly this is the firm it was modeled after. Unfortunately this guy tries to be too cute in his writing style and he's not nearly as funny as he thinks. He wants to impress you with his drug use and his wild life and also manages to get in quite a bit about his business. BTW, he does appear to be very talented as a chop shop owner/manager and just from a few tidbits you can see he knows the aggressive sales techniques necessary to be successful. But this book is confusing, boring, too long, and has very few interesting points. The author tells you what he wants you to hear, then gets to the end of the story and runs out of time without completing the full story. For example, after going on forever about his beautiful wife and drug use, after rehab they divorce. But instead of completing the story for full disclosure it's about two pages with no mention of fault or what really happened.

The synopsis of this book is exactly the type book I like: true stories of Wall Street. But this book is hugely disappointing and not worth the time. I'd take a pass on this one as it's not worth the time invested.
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50 of 58 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Really Bad! October 12, 2007
Format:Hardcover
"The Wolf of Wall Street" is probably the worst book I've read all year. It consists of non-stop extreme drug use, promiscuous and pornographic sex, money laundering, and stock manipulation, while lacking little or no explanation of how author Jordan Belfort built his firm and worked his financial machinations.

Other sources help fill in the blanks. Belfort's business, according to Business Week, was part of a $10 billion/year business that regulators lagged in controlling. "Chop stocks" (bought at a large discount) made up perhaps half the 1997 85 million-share daily volume of the OTC Bulletin Board, plus dozens of stocks on the NASDAQ Small Cap Market. Belfort would purchase a hidden stake in a relatively new firm that would then issue "letter" stock under Rule 144 of the securities laws, commonplace at many perfectly legitimate companies as a way of rewarding key employees and giving them an equity interest. Letter stock and warrants were also issued to compensate consultants in lieu of cash. And stock issued overseas, under Regulation S of the securities laws, is a widely recognized way of raising capital for emerging companies. Reg. S stock is cheap for a simple reason: Since it cannot be legally traded for two years, it is commonly issued at a steep discount. Rule 144 stock is also cheap because it is usually issued at little or no cost and must be held for one or two years.

Belfort would make large profits by ignoring the law and "laundering" the stocks by selling them long before the two years had expired. If customers were to see the stock (marked "restricted"), they might realize that it's not supposed to be sold to the public. So the chop houses had a simple solution: They didn't show the customers the stock. The shares were only a book entry, and the brokers were reluctant to resell it once bought by a customer. If forced to do so, they would by duping a new customer into purchasing the shares.

Belfort served 22 months in prison and has been banned from the securities industry. His firm was closed in 1996, and he is required to repay $110 million to investors at the rate of 50% of everything he now makes. So far less than $700,000 has been paid.
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97 of 118 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother October 8, 2007
Format:Hardcover
Did anyone else lose count of how many times Mr. Belfort used the phrase "luscious loamy loins" in this book? The Duchess must have had some interesting private parts if they were indeed "loamy". Hmm.

This memoir is not worth reading unless you were an employee of Stratton Oakmont or had some kind of connection to the people mentioned in it. The book is mostly about Jordan's careless spending, complete disregard for others, and raging drug and prostitute habits. You don't even get the sense that he's remorseful about any of it in the end: it rather seems that Mr. Belfort is boasting about his bad behavior.

The beginning of the book details the rise of Jordan in the broker business and does have some interesting chapters. Then it takes a nose dive and turns into an ego trip down Mr. Belfort's memory lane. It gets painfully boring and quite unbelievable at points: Jordan describes miracle medical cures, his superhuman resistance to deadly doses of various drugs, ridiculous tawdry conversations... It's full of way-out-there stuff that makes you think maybe Jordan imagined these things in his drug-addled mind. Even if some of it is true, it's not very interesting and mostly I just felt embarassed for him and the people whose nasty habits he reveals in this tale.

Save your money, Jordan is a conceited bore.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars Awful, just awful
I came across this book when I read that it was supposedly the inspiration for the move Boiler Room. Read more
Published 3 days ago by mp
4.0 out of 5 stars Good read on the excess of wall st in the 90's
good page turner, describes the craziness of wall st. in the 90's. Good detail on how his addictions ended up ruining everything
Published 7 days ago by joeiann
4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Solid Story
Very interesting, very entertaining read. Amazing story and insight to what took place in the finance industry in the 90's...when you could get away with dirt like this. Read more
Published 20 days ago by Geo Googins
5.0 out of 5 stars :)
My husband loved this book. He read this in a couple days and is ready to read the next one.
Published 22 days ago by Kelley Haack
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Great book. Its sexually graphic and I'm not sure If I believe everything in this book. It was a nice escape and peek into the world of Wall street.
Published 1 month ago by ChuckyB18
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read
Very exhilarating and fascinating story that chronicles an ambitious young man's rise and fall as the head of brokerage firm, who exploited the existing financial system to his own... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Reade Fors
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly stylized writing; clear voice telling it just how it was.
I worked at Stratton Oakmont in 1995.
I know many people did not like this book and found it revolting or shocking, but is all true and it is stated exactly how it all... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Teresa Grubman
1.0 out of 5 stars Consider your eye-retinal energies for this one..
Please take this review with a grain salt since I was unable to

read the book in its entirety. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Seeking prof..
3.0 out of 5 stars a fly on the wall
If this is an expose of trader life, these guys are crazy. Is there a point where you make so much money that you don't care what you do? Read more
Published 3 months ago by Thomas J. Ba Ross
5.0 out of 5 stars highly entertaining
This book was recommended to me when I was vacationing in New Zealand by a random person I met on my trip. Little did I know that Hollywood would be soon turning it into a movie. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lindsey Storm
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I loved the book Be the first to reply
Jordan Belfort ripped off hundreds of Stratton customers
According to the New York Times, he's paying investors only 50 percent of his gross income -- until they receive $110 million. So far, he has paid about $660,000.
I think Jordan ought to be forced to pay more than 50 percent of his gross income -- or to get a second job. Obviously, he has plenty... Read more
Feb 19, 2008 by A. You |  See all 5 posts
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