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The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess by [Turney Duff]

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The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess Kindle Edition

by Turney Duff (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A former Galleon Group trader portrays an after-hours Wall Street culture where drugs and sex are rampant and billions in trading commissions flow to those who dangle the most enticements.

A remarkable writing debut, filled with indelible moments, The Buy Side shows as no book ever has the rewards—and dizzying temptations—of making a living on the Street.

Growing up in the 1980’s Turney Duff was your average kid from Kennebunk, Maine, eager to expand his horizons. After trying – and failing – to land a job as a journalist, he secured a trainee position at Morgan Stanley and got his first feel for the pecking order that exists in the trading pits. Those on the “buy side,” the traders who make large bets on whether a stock will rise or fall, are the “alphas” and those on the “sell side,” the brokers who handle their business, are eager to please.

How eager to please was brought home stunningly to Turney in 1999 when he arrived at the Galleon Group, a colossal hedge-fund management firm run by secretive founder Raj Rajaratnam. Finally in a position to trade on his own, Turney was encouraged to socialize with the sell side and siphon from his new broker friends as much information as possible. Soon he was not just vacuuming up valuable tips but also being lured into a variety of hedonistic pursuits. Naïve enough to believe he could keep up the lifestyle without paying a price, he managed to keep an eye on his buy-and-sell charts and, meanwhile, pondered the strange goings on at Galleon, where tens of millions were being made each week in sometimes mysterious ways.

At his next positions, at Argus Partners and J.L. Berkowitz, Turney climbed to even higher heights – and, as it turned out, plummeted to even lower depths – as, by day, he solidified his reputation one of the Street’s most powerful healthcare traders, and by night, he blazed a path through the city’s nightclubs, showing off his social genius and voraciously inhaling any drug that would fill the void he felt inside.

A mesmerizingly immersive journey through Wall Street’s first millennial decade, and a poignant self portrait by a young man who surely would have destroyed himself were it not for his decision to walk away from a seven-figure annual income, The Buy Side is one of the best coming-of-age-on-the-Street books ever written.

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June 4, 2013
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Bracing…calls to mind books like Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, and especially Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis…As spectacle [the book] easily trumps both…Mr. Duff proves a fine wordsmith: his prose is smooth, lean and rhythmic…An entertaining and cautionary tale, well worth your time.”
—Bryan Burrough, The New York Times

“A heavyweight confessional about the perils of a life spent chasing the almighty dollar…even though the author’s brutal honesty about his increasingly chaotic personal life is commendable, it’s really more his vivid portrait of the everyday inner workings of life at a hedge fund that fascinates…A fast-paced memoir of the easy-money hypercapitalist dream-turned-nightmare.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Looking for a Hollywood-worthy account of Wall Street with lots of juicy details about the high life? Duff, a former financial trader who climbed the ranks at several major firms, provides a fascinating glimpse into the trader’s life as he narrates his journey from smalltown boyhood in Kennebunk, Maine, to hitting the jackpot in Manhattan, to succumbing to the poisons of success…[This] fast-paced tale will absorb readers…a wild ride.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This is why I keep my money safe and sound under the mattress. You could get high just reading this book. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Wall Street traders."
—James Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls

“Turney Duff is a natural storyteller, and his tale of how a naive kid from Maine traded in L.L. Bean for Armani and got sucked into the seamy side of Wall Street is almost impossible to put down. The book is by turns hilarious, harrowing, maddening, and illuminating. After this debut, the smart money will be on Duff.”
—Bethany McLean, New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here

“Turney Duff’s The Buy Side picks up where the Academy Award-winning film about systemic corruption on Wall Street, 'Inside Job', leaves off. Duff, who at one time was the promising rookie on the trading desk at troubled hedge fund Galleon, gives us a front-row seat to the Street’s dark side—but the tale also features a personal story that will have you cheering as Duff fights his way through a jungle of excess and figures out what really matters. To all those who want to rule the market not just during business hours but after hours, beware—you may not have Duff’s survival skills.”
—Lawrence G. McDonald, New York Times bestselling author of A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

“The Buy Side takes the reader on an extremely wild ride so eloquently and honestly that we never want it to end. Cocaine wants everything you love and everything that loves you. Turney Duff had everything and nothing while trading billions of dollars on a razor's edge. His book takes you from Wall Street to Skid Row to the Thompson Hotel—and then, mercifully, back to sanity and finding a place in the world. Hang on, The Buy Side is gonna move you around, and there are no seatbelts to keep you from getting hit hard.”
—Brian O’Dea, author of High: Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler

“The Buy Side is ‘Wall Street’ meets ‘Breaking Bad’—except that this book is fact not fiction. Turney Duff yields to temptation at every turn, and the sheer volume of criminal behavior he saw, and even participated in, is astonishing…If you want to see Wall Street’s seamy underbelly firsthand, read this book.”
—Frank Partnoy, bestselling author of F.I.A.S.C.O and Infectious Greed

"If you took Gordon Gekko, Bud Fox, a copy of Bright Lights, Big City, and threw them in a blender with an ounce of cocaine, a bottle of Patron Tequila, and your favorite teddy bear you'd have yourself a Buy Side smoothie. Turney's my kind of guy; a madman with heart. I couldn't put the book down."
—Colin Broderick, author of Orangutan

“Does Wall Street make people crazy or are crazy people simply attracted to Wall Street? The Buy Side doesn’t get us any closer to answering that question, but along the way we get a look inside perhaps the most ethically-challenged investment firm in recent memory, and a harrowing journey through drug addiction and recovery. This is not a musical comedy; at the end, you’re just relieved that Duff is alive.”
—Jared Dillian, author of Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers

“Turney Duff's The Buy Side is the perfect parable for Wall Street's lost decade. Duff’s account of his rise and fall has it all, from a fast-paced coke-crazed trip through Manhattan nightlife that conjures Bright Lights, Big City, to an eyewitness account of insider trading and front running that reads like a federal indictment. Broke but not broken, Duff ends up better than others on Wall Street have—sober, chastened, and lucky to be alive after the self-destructive excesses of easy money and empty ambition.”
—Guy Lawson, New York Times bestselling author of Octopus

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

October 2003, 7:30 p.m.
New York City

I’m ready. The early darkness falls as we make our way across Tribeca, our shoes clicking on the cobblestones. At this hour the Bugaboo strollers have yielded to the coming Saturday-night revelry. My roommates and inner circle—six men and three women, all fashionably dressed as if they’re attending a red-carpet premiere—surround me. They mirror my every move, like a school of night fish. Our pace increases as we stride the few blocks to West Broadway and Canal. I wear a flannel shirt that has the sleeves ripped off, my favorite pair of worn jeans, and baby blue tinted sunglasses with studded fake jewels around the lenses.

Marcus, the owner of the Canal Room, meets us outside the club’s door. When he sees me, a smile stretches across his face. “They’re with me,” I say, flicking a thumb at my trailing companions. The doorman unhooks the red velvet rope and we follow Marcus into the club. It’s nearly empty, but not for long. Marcus is smiling for good reason. He calls me the Pied Piper—King of the Night. And soon my following, the royalty of young Wall Street, will fill his club.

By eight p.m. the line outside the Canal Room stretches to more than a hundred people. By eight thirty it’s almost doubled. When the doors finally open it’s as though someone has pulled a stopper in a marble sink filled with champagne. Dressed in Armani and Prada, the excited throng pours inside. I stand by the door, playing the role of greeter, accumulating lipstick impressions on my cheeks and, occasionally, a small gift—a perk of the buy side. One friend, Brian, gives me ten ecstasy pills. I have no intention of taking them—well, maybe just one or two. I shove them into my pocket to use as party favors later. I’ll walk up to anyone who I know is down with it and, with a devilish grin, ask, “Breath mint?” When they open their mouth I’ll pop one in. Tonight, there are no limits.

I’ve arranged everything: the space, the bands, and the guest list. The invites were sent out by my alter ego, Cleveland D. The club has just been remodeled with a brand-new sound system, the best in New York City, and now, appropriately, it’s blaring Missy Elliott’s “Work It.” If any of the guests thought this night was just another average Wall Street bash featuring some overpriced DJ or a retro band like the Allman Brothers or Foreigner, that notion is put to rest when Lisa Jackson, a cross-dressing glam singer, takes the stage. When she breaks into “Purple Rain” and then “Ring My Bell,” it’s as though she’s just grabbed a handful of every guy’s well-tailored crotch. And she’s only the foreplay.

By nine thirty the place is throbbing. Liquor flows. People dance or sway to the music, drinks held high. I make my way to the bar, but it takes me five minutes to move five feet. I can’t talk to anyone for more than a few seconds before feeling a tug at my back or a hand on my shoulder. I can see people across the room flashing a nod or toasting me with their drink. It seems all of Wall Street is here, at least all of Wall Street that matters. Every brokerage firm is represented: other buy side traders, sell siders, bankers, fixed income traders, and the rest.

On the stage the group Naughty by Nature begins their hip-hop version of the Jackson 5 hit “ABC.” It takes just a few notes for the entire crowd to erupt, realizing they’re hearing the song “OPP.” Multiple rotating strobe lights frantically stripe the fist-pumping revelers. Treach, Naughty by Nature’s lead rapper, has the microphone in his hand and is pacing back and forth onstage. The energy surges, plateaus, then builds some more. The area in front of the stage is a pulsating mob, and as the space between the swaying bodies draws closer and closer, escape becomes impossible for anyone in front. The musical loop continues, spurring the crowd to beg for more, and then Treach finally puts the microphone to his mouth. “You down with Cleveland D?” he shouts as he points the microphone toward the crowd. “Yeah, you know me,” they shout back.

I stand next to the stage, the thump of the bass hammering my eardrums as I shout the lyrics: “Army with harmony . . . Dave drop a load on ’em . . .” I sing along with Treach as if we’re one, as if the words are as much mine as his. In front of me, four hundred guests—sexy, attractive, drunk, intelligent, powerful, and all with fat wallets—jump and sing with as much gangsta as they can muster. They’re a tribe doing a triumphant war dance. I know this room will earn hundreds of millions of dollars combined in annual income this coming year— what the Street likes to call “fuck-you money.” And on this night, I have all these princes and princesses of finance in my front pocket.

Then the flush of ecstatic excitement I’m feeling subsides and in its place comes a curious and discomforting thought. In a distended moment that suddenly opens like a chasm, it strikes me: I’ve just turned thirty-four; this party is meant to celebrate that. But it’s meant to celebrate something more. Somehow, against the odds, I’ve become a hedge fund trader—a job description that is the envy of Wall Street. I’m at the very pinnacle of my career, a career powered not by an Ivy League MBA or some computer-like dexterity (a common skill set among the youthful and moneyed dancing in front of me) but by an odd Wall Street truth: what happens after the closing bell is as important as anything that happens during the day. It’s during those hours after office lights have been turned out that I shine.

But as I consider what I’ve accomplished, something gnaws at my satisfaction—bores a deep hole in my happiness. I can’t put my finger on it . . . it’s just, as I stand there, right beside the stage, looking out at this sea of privilege, I’m empty. And, for the first time in a long while, I don’t know what can fill me. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Turney Duff has worked on Wall Street since 1994, including at Morgan Stanley, the Galleon Group, Argus Partners, and J.L. Berkowitz. A graduate of Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, he has written and executive-produced two short movies and under his rap name "Cleveland D," was partly responsible for the infamous Galleon song, "On the Good Ship Galleon." He currently lives in Long Island City. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

From Booklist

With the twists and turns of a suspense novel, this autobiographical account of the rise and fall of a hedge fund trader exposes the risks and liabilities of a career on Wall Street during one of the most turbulent decades of the financial industry. Duff’s 15-year career parallels the peaks and valleys of the stock market, from the boom of the 1990s to the tumultuous decline in the early 2000s. With unabashed honesty, he tells how he went from an entry-level position in Morgan Stanley in 1993 to successful trader on the “buy side” before his excessive partying and downward spiral into drugs ended his career and he had the courage to walk away for good. He exposes the occupational hazards of his high-pressure trading jobs, the lure of power and money when million-dollar trades were commonplace, insider alliances were useful, and collusion was a part of the business. Fast-paced and gritty, this is a fascinating and convincing portrayal of one trader’s challenges in a tough environment and his ultimate redemption. --Cindy Kryszak --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Amazon.com Review

Q&A with Turney Duff

Q. When you had big money coming in, you were spending as fast as you got – sometimes on bizarre over-the-top purchases. As a small-town kid from Maine, did you ever look in the mirror and say, “What the heck am I doing?”

A. Yes, but I probably didn’t use the word “heck.” I would have moments where I’d say to myself “I can’t believe this is my life,” which likely only added to the excess. My attitude was, “What’s the point of making a lot of money, unless you’re going to enjoy it?’” so I tried to enjoy it. Conversely, when I was bottoming out, I constantly was saying to myself, “What happened?” The real danger comes when people start equating net-worth to self-worth.

Q. You seem to have been the Einstein of networking, a guy who made being a party animal work for him in a big way. Why do you think the social aspect of Wall Street came so easy, and did it startle you when you realized that having a high social I.Q. could be more profitable than “reading the tape” or being a quant?

A. I’m flattered but, please, I wasn’t the Einstein of anything. I just didn’t have any other skill to rely on and I’m very social by nature. There’s no magic to it, I just treat people the way I’d like to be treated. But I don’t think I ever had an “ah ha” moment where I realized this was the key to success. I just knew that whatever I was doing was working, so I kept doing it. I guess this could add to the I.Q. vs. E.Q. debate. (Oh, and by the way, I understand Albert was also a big fan of shaking the snow globe.)

Q. You worked for Raj Rajaratham, who was convicted of insider trading on an unprecedented scale. Do you think that insider trading is endemic to Wall Street’s culture?

A. I can only speak to what I saw and experienced but I think it’s headed in the right direction now. When I was placing bets on the market, Wall Street had convinced itself that the area of insider trading was very grey. It felt like a victimless crime. The thinking went, to compete you have to bend the rules. It’s not all that different from the steroid era and Major League Baseball. There are a lot of guys whose careers have asterisks next to their earnings. As long as there’s big money at stake people are going to cheat. That’s not only how Wall Street works, that’s how the world works. But with the spotlight now on Wall Street it’s harder for inside traders, and it’s getting harder all the time.

Q. Has Wall Street grown less trustworthy? Should we credit what those in power have to say about their integrity?

A. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people with integrity on Wall Street. I was there during 9/11, and there wasn’t a more courageous and patriotic place in the country. Ironically, as more negative press comes out we should probably trust the trading community more. The jig is up. Sure, we’ll still see some bad guys get taken down now and then, but my guess is, the majority of people are playing by the rules. It’s all fear-based now.

Q. The book describes in vivid detail some of your most vulnerable moments – truly jaw- dropping addiction. At what point did you realize that, without help, you’d be unable to pull out of your downward spiral?

A. I made the decision a year after my first rehab that I was only going to relapse once. I knew that I couldn’t just have one, or party just a little, so I told myself that I would blow it out one night and then get back to recovery. After that night I told myself I was allowed to relapse once a month, very private and nobody gets hurt. Soon after, I told myself that I could party twice a month and before I knew it I was right back where I was before rehab—even worse. So by the fall of 2008 I knew there was no end in sight. Something was going to break, but I didn’t have the courage to stop it myself. I had to crash.

Q. Ultimately, what pulled you back from the brink and made you say no to Wall Street’s seven-figure seduction was your daughter. You don’t hold much back. Do you worry how she’ll view the book when she’s old enough to read it?

A. The two people I wasn’t sure I wanted reading this book were my daughter, Lola, and my mom. But once I decided to write it I was fully committed. I can’t predict what my daughter will eventually say, but at the very least she’ll know I was honest. All I can do is show her my love every single day. It only took my mother a week or so to digest the book. Now she’s my biggest supporter. She says she’s proud of my honesty and courage. I hope that’s more than a mom’s take.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ALBR6JG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Currency (June 4, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 4, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2625 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #261,912 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #17 in Financial Services
- #56 in Financial Services Industry
- #165 in Biographies of Business Professionals

Customer Reviews:
4.3 2,190 ratings

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Turney Duff

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As the youngest of four children and the only boy with three perfectly behaved, straight A-student sisters, I quickly developed a knack for doing things differently. Being a B student with a 970 SAT I had to think creatively. Like convincing my junior English teacher to let me write a screenplay instead of a term paper or writing and directing a Brady Bunch horror movie for Spanish 3. And for extra credit a short story about being reincarnated into a twenty dollar bill, but it was always just a little bit different.

I was born in Cleveland in 1969 (which explains the tattoo of Chief Wahoo, the Indian's mascot, on my ankle), but moved to Kennebunk, Maine when I was only 7. Kennebunk is a nice place to visit and an even better place to grow up, which, of course, means I couldn't wait to get out of there.

I graduated from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in 1993 and then moved to New York City with one-month's rent to my name. I was going to be a journalist. I wanted to write. But one-month's rent isn't enough to become a journalist in New York, so I found out. It's not enough to become just about anything in New York except maybe a homeless person. Luckily, I guess, my uncle gave me a couple of phone numbers to call-his contacts on Wall Street.

Though Wall Street wasn't in my plan, once I was there I figured what the hell? Let's make some money. So I set my sights on a trading career. But during those fifteen years of climbing the Wall Street money tree, writing would call to me, like a whisper somewhere in the back of my thoughts, but, never forceful enough for me to focus on it or sit down long enough to truly pursue.

It would take nearly a complete disaster in my life, self-inflicted by city lights and fondness of cocaine for me to turn back to the page. But it took what it takes, and I'm grateful it did.

Now I'm right back where I started with a month's rent saved up and an empty computer screen in front of me and I couldn't be happier. Oh yes I could. And am. When I'm with my eight-year-old daughter, Lola.

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David L. Bahnsen

A Fourth Step Masterpiece

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

I will let you in a little secret (though I think I admitted this in my review of Wolf of Wall Street already … I will read any book and see any movie that comes out regarding life on Wall Street. I can know ahead of time that it is going to be cartoonishly stupid, and they often are, and I will still read or see it. Some are quite serious in nature (see my lengthy list of reviews covering the financial crisis of 2008), and some are entertainment-driven (the Wolf of Wall Street is a case in point). Michael Lewis may be known to many of you for Moneyball and The Blind Side, but the book that made him famous, Liar’s Poker, literally began a genre of books describing the excesses of Wall Street behavior. I’m not sure that any book in the genre since Liar’s Poker have been quite as good, but many have tried with varying degrees of success. And I read all of them.

Part of me thinks I read all of this stuff because it just fascinates me what people think about the financial advisory profession. I am a corner office managing director guy at a huge Wall Street firm, but I eat dinner with my wife and kids almost every single night. I’ve seen plenty of folks misbehave, but not any more than at an action sports trade show or a real estate office holiday party. It is the BUSINESS of Wall Street I love – the business of advising on capital. In case you haven’t heard me say it before, I LOVE free market capitalism, and there is no free market capitalism without capital markets. Therefore, I love the business of capital markets. And in the United States of America, we call that business “Wall Street”, so there you go.

Anyway, now that my little secret fetish is out (regarding guilty pleasure movie watching and book reading), let me explain what I was expecting out of Turney Duff’s The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Tale of Spectacular Excess, and let me tell you what I got instead. I was expecting another infantile tale of some piker who, imagine this, liked drugs and sex – a lot. I was expecting a book claiming that every single person in a 50-mile vicinity of the Hudson River lives the same way. And I was expecting a book where a failed piker would blame Wall Street’s business immorality for his lack of success in the business. What I got, on the other hand, was very, very different.

I am not sure I would call the book a mere story of a Wall Street burnout. First of all, the real-life narrative itself is quite rare. For a young man educated in Ohio, a state many Wall Street elites are unaware is a part of the union, to become a prominent buy side trader is rare enough. But for the path to that trading job to have been an admin assistant job on the retail side of the business is utterly unheard of. Mr. Duff describes his journey with skill and literary flair. By the time he ends up at Galleon Group, a massive hedge fund which has since blown up behind the insider trading convictions of its key personnel, I am already enjoying the book, and realizing it is not going to be at all what I expected.

Duff gives readers a far more sensible and credible explanation of what he did for a living than many attempts at describing the business do. Unlike the pathetic scene in Wolf of Wall Street where Leonardo Dicaprio starts yelling to the FBI about “collateralized debt obligations” (before there was such a thing, and something he to this day would have absolutely no knowledge of or participation in whatsoever), Duff does not merely throw out finance-sounding vocabulary to tease the readers and get back to the stories of sex and drugs. Yes, there are a lot of stories about sex and drugs (more drugs than sex), but the book doesn’t insult its readers with disingenuous or vanilla descriptions of high finance. It is comprehensible but sharp, and that is a tough thing to do.

The book does go into exhaustive detail of the demons which brought down Mr. Duff’s career as a trader. In fairness to the author, though, it simply does not read as a glamorization of that lifestyle. Jordan Belfort agonized his readers with an almost frat-boy like description of his shenanigans in the Wolf of Wall Street book (which he pretty much had to do because there weren’t ten pages of actual business material). Duff isn’t bragging. He’s confessing. And if you aren’t rooting for him throughout the final chapters of the book to find recovery, to find sobriety, and to find God, then you just aren’t human.

The book really is an addiction tale more than a business thriller, but it is compelling, honest, and extremely inviting. I spent some time reading some interviews Duff gave after the book came out and he blew me away with his candor. There is no attempt to demonize all of Wall Street – quite the opposite. There is no juvenile story of how “Wall Street polluted me and made me do it”. He is a recovering addict who has been blessed with an extraordinary writing skill. I, for one, hope he’ll write again. This “genre” needs more writers like him. Michael Lewis worked in finance for about ten minutes and has spent twenty-five years getting rich from his moralizing, hypocritical tirades (though he is a remarkable writer, I confess). I do not know what the future holds for Turney Duff, but if he keeps his hands off a highball and on a keyboard, I am positive the best days of his life are still to come.

Because life on Main Street and Wall Street both testify to the powerful adage: Don’t quit before the miracle happens.

28 people found this helpful

An Epic Depiction of the Rise of the Hedge Fund

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

The book has been out less than 48 hours, this is a Verified Purchase, and I'm writing a review -- that gives you an idea of how immensely readable this book is.

Full Disclosure: Having just written a Wall Street memoir of my own, and having spent roughly the same 15 years on the Street as Turney, I am very familiar with the world he writes about, having been present at some of the book's scenes, and even had a tangential acquaintance with the author at the time. While some may claim that makes this review somewhat biased, it's also true that that familiarity creates a very high "rings true" bar for me as a reader.

Turney soars over that bar.

One of the things a reader has to worry about in any memoir is determining the reliability of the narrator. This is the first Wall Street memoir I have ever read where I didn't feel the author had at least in some way enhanced his own image either via overstatement or omission. Turney Duff was as affable an individual as he describes in the book. If he learned that you, a colleague of one of his brokers, discovered a new burger joint on the lower East Side, he'd get you on the phone and talk about the finer points of burgers with you, offering to take you to his favorite joint by the end of the call. (This actually happened.) Describing his skill as a trader, Turney claims that he shunned technical analysis, lacked fundamental knowledge of the companies he traded and had no taste for macro economic data, yet made money for his employers by expertly reading the people he interacted with everyday. That claim is convincingly backed up by his descriptions of different people in the book. It is incredible how spot on he is in his descriptions of individuals I know from that era. But don't take my word for it, instead consider this: At two different points in the book, he subtly eviscerates both the character and trading skill of a trading desk colleague. And yet, on the day of The Buy Side's publication, that very person tweeted out support for the book. That, I thought, tells you all you need to know about how accurate the accounts in the book are.

As a writer, Turney's gift is his pacing of the story. There is no real suspense to his story, he doesn't resort (like some recent authors - ahem) to cheap footnotes and asides in an attempt to entertain the reader and yet the story soars along. There are a lot of great storytellers in bars and as evidenced by the early-1993 scenes in the book, Turney has been able to count himself among those ranks for years. What's exceedingly rare is the person who can translate that skill to the written page as well. Turney Duff is in very select company on that count.

My only suggestions for more detail centered on two issues: 1) David Slaine, is the wire-wearer who brought down Raj Rajaratnam and Galleon. (It's heavily implied in the book he tried to coax 2008/2009-era info out of Turney as well.) Early in the book, Turney vividly describes Slaine's early 2000s exile from Galleon. How did he get back inside the firm and how much does Turney, given his keen observational skills, feel the humiliating exit a decade earlier shaped Slaine's motives?

2) Turney describes himself as advancing his career by overcoming a lack of traditional ability with superior social skills. I'd like to know if the sell side individuals who supplied him with drugs and hookers were doing the same thing. There's definitely a delineation between top-tier, bulge bracket firms (maybe a half-dozen firms) and the other three to four dozen lesser-tier firms who covered Turney. Was the hooker/drug culture more prevalent at firms, and the individuals who represented them, that had nothing else to offer? Given Turney's credibility, there's no one better to answer that question.

The Buy Side is a great book, and if we're all lucky, coming someday to a theater near you.

9 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Fer Serrallonga

Simply great

Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on December 31, 2019

Verified Purchase

Great story about what could happen when someone rise to fast. I recommend this book also if you don’t now anything about Wall Street.

Gerry Biaz

What a rush!!!! Read it.

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on May 28, 2015

Verified Purchase

Turney Duff....with a name like that I guess you were always destined for greatness!! I absolutely loved the style and pace of this book. This guys brutal honesty in describing his journey and the insights he gives us into the darkest corners of his fractured, drug fuelled mind at the time is so, so brave that I doubt few other authors would or could have done it. In return he gives us a peek at what drives these people to keep on going long after it would make more sense to stop. Very gutsy mate!!!!

Jill van Vucht

Banksters how they operate

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on April 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

Very funny & informative about finance .

Gisela Setyawan

Four Stars

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on October 27, 2015

Verified Purchase

Hilarious and fun to read. But just another typical story about working in the capital market.

dave

Four Stars

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on August 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

Not bad.

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