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Liar's Poker: From the author of the Big Short by [Michael Lewis]

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Michael Lewis

Liar's Poker: From the author of the Big Short Kindle Edition

by Michael Lewis (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

5,633 ratings

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The original classic that revealed the truth about ambition, greed and excess in London and Wall Street, by the author of bestsellers THE BIG SHORT and THE PREMONITION.
__________

The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar's Poker.

Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street's premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush.

From mere trainee to lowly geek, to triumphal Big Swinging Dick: that was Michael Lewis's pell-mell progress through the dealing rooms of Salomon Brothers in New York and London during the heady mid-80s when they were probably the world's most powerful and profitable merchant bank.

Funny, frightening, breathless and heartless, Liar's Poker is the original story of hysterical greed and excessive ambition, one that is now more potent and enthralling than ever.
__________

'If you thought Gordon Gekko of the Wall Street movie was an implausibly corrupt piece of fiction, see how you like the real thing. This rip-the-lid-off account of the bond-dealing brouhaha is the work of a real-life bond salesman.' The Sunday Times

'So memorable and alive . . . one of those rare works that encapsulate and define an era.' Fortune

'The funniest book on Wall Street I've ever read.' Tom Wolfe

'Wickedly funny' Daily Express

'Hilarious' New York Times

Print length

313 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date

June 5, 2006
File size

866 KB
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Liar's Poker (Norton Paperback)
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The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Knowing about markets is knowing about other people’s weaknesses.
Highlighted by 1,855 Kindle readers
“Those who say don’t know, and those who know don’t say.”
Highlighted by 1,598 Kindle readers
Knowing about markets is knowing about other people’s weaknesses.
Highlighted by 1,102 Kindle readers
The only thing history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesn’t teach us anything.
Highlighted by 936 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

As described by Lewis, liar's poker is a game played in idle moments by workers on Wall Street, the objective of which is to reward trickery and deceit. With this as a metaphor, Lewis describes his four years with the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers, from his bizarre hiring through the training program to his years as a successful bond trader. Lewis illustrates how economic decisions made at the national level changed securities markets and made bonds the most lucrative game on the Street. His description of the firm's personalities and of the events from 1984 through the crash of October 1987 are vivid and memorable. Readers of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities ( LJ 11/15/87) are likely to enjoy this personal memoir. BOMC and Fortune Book Club selection.
- Joseph Barth, U.S. Military Acad . Lib., West Point, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, and The Undoing Project. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004JHY7PY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder & Stoughton (June 5, 2006)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 5, 2006
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 866 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 313 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #300,231 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #403 in Biographies of the Rich & Famous
- #1,738 in Rich & Famous Biographies
- #2,984 in Memoirs (Kindle Store)

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Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of The Undoing Project, Liar's Poker, Flash Boys, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Home Game and The Big Short, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children.

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4.5 out of 5

5,633 global ratings

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P. Schneider

insight into the life of quants

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 12, 2023

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I always wondered what these guys were buying and selling. The monetary amounts involved were unbelievable. The book is written to understand the bond market a little better. It was very entertaining and I will look for a similar one.

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Neville Samuels

A Classic and Timeless Tale of Life as an Investment Banker

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 26, 2012

Verified Purchase

Although originally published in October 1989, Michael Lewis' 'Liar's Poker' is as timely a read today as it was back then. It seems the zero sum game in investment banking hasn't changed. For every money maker, there is a money loser, and usually it's the banks customers who lose.

Described as 'wickedly funny,' Michael Lewis has a knack for articulating the absurd, and this is his first, and one of his best books. A true story of how he started his career as a trainee in the investment banking firm, Salomon Brothers, later becoming a bond trader based in the Salomons London office, until he left in 1988.

He worked the phones, and on his customers, hard enough to become a 'Big Swinging Dick', or traders code for those who trumped the system, making millions for their company.

Michael Lewis, unlike many other traders, did have a conscience, but he also wanted to keep his job. He makes up names for those who helped and inspired him at the firm, like 'Dash Riprock', his constant trader companion, and his 'Rabbis'; a mentor, or manager who took him under their wing.

The author is less forgiving and used real names for those who deserve some kind of scorn, like John Gutfruend, who was chairman of Salomon Brothers during Michael Lewis' tenure there. Described as the 'last person a nerve-racked trader wanted to see.' He was the type of chairman who liked to sneak up from behind and surprise his traders.

The author learns, soon after leaving his training for the trading desks that 'some of the men... were truly awful human beings... They didn't have customers. They had victims.'

Other characters are colorfully portrayed in the book, although not many women are in the bunch, since, at the time, it was a male dominated play pen with not too many Big Swinging Dickettes. There was the 'Human Piranha,' a legendary trader who sprouted out profanities, stunning some trainees into silence and awe. And those 'mean gluttons' who worked as mortgage traders. Lewis wrote, 'nothing angered them more than being without food, unless it was being interrupted while they ate.'

Michael Lewis also describes in the book the creation and use of mortgage bonds, but not too technically, so it won't overwhelm a layperson. And this is just one reason why 'Liar's Poker' is a timeless piece. After all, it was the invention of mortgage bonds that ultimately led to the financial crisis in 2008.

And of course, the book would be vacant without mention of bonuses. Those fat sums of money handed out around December time to those who scored well enough to earn one. The size of a bonus measured the traders worth, and ego. Lewis adds and subtracts some zeros to give us an idea of how first and second-year traders bonuses were subject to a 'floor and ceiling.' And how the business 'froze' around bonus time. It was all anyone thought about. Michael Lewis explains that watching the faces of people coming out of their bonus meetings 'was worth a thousand lectures on the meaning of money in our small society.'

The only difference between 1988 and now is that those excessive trader and executive bonuses are now part of a larger political and public discourse. In 'Liar's Poker,' Lewis describes how large salary bumps and bonuses are used to buy loyalty. But in reality, if an investment house across the street offers a better deal, the trader won't hesitate to go for more zeroes.

Michael Lewis, is a respected financial journalist and non-fiction author. All of his books have been best-sellers for good reason. 'Liar's Poker' is an exemplary example of how truth can be stranger than fiction. Lewis describes life at Salomon like being in a 'jungle.' The players must be fiction, but, nope, they are real.

The scary thing about this book is how timeless, and prophetic it is. Michael Lewis experienced the Wall Street crash of October 1987, and describes it in the book. And here we are, more than 20 years later. History repeating itself.

12 people found this helpful

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Michael Safar

My golly are you missing out

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 17, 2022

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Just read it and you'll find out its greatness! Do yourself a favor and buy this book.

One person found this helpful

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David Gallman

Hello Suckers!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 31, 2009

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Liar's Poker is a bluffing game played by the stock and bond traders at Salomon Brothers. There is series of arbitrary numbers -- the serial numbers on dollar bills -- that the associates make bids on. No one has any idea what the other players are holding, so the actual numbers are less important than the traders' abilities to bluff each other. The game is how they learn and practice putting one over on each other.

The game is also the title and central metaphor for Michael Lewis' 1989 memoir about becoming a bond trader at Salomon Brothers. His book pops up on a lot of best-of-business writing lists. It may seem odd to be reading it twenty years on, but if you really want to understand how the seeds of our current economic crisis were sown, you should read it.

Salomon Brothers basically invented the "mortgage backed security" that are one of the major causes of our economic problems.

What is revealing and relevant about Lewis' book is the dissection of the structure of the brokerage house and the attitudes that dominate it. The company, trader, and salesman's best interest are often at odds with those of their customers. The basic principle of trading is this: bluff the customer into placing big bets on stocks and bonds and take a commission on the sale. If the bet "blows up" the customer, well, "Hey, it's the market. It is unpredictable. Who knew?" (But the company and trader got their piece of the action.) If the bet produces a big return for the customer, then the customer has more money to use to make bigger bets with the now "proven" financial adviser.

In the lexicon of Salomon Brothers, "blowing up a customer" is when the customer loses their entire investment. It is commonly known in the industry that associates fresh from the training program will "blow up" most of their customers for about six months. Salomon Brothers only allows these green traders or "geeks" access to small investors to prevent damage to their big institutional investors, the organizations that will make bets in the tens of millions to billion of dollars.

The working class and middle class salary men who have bought into the common wisdom that the market always goes up over time and will beat inflation get fed to the "geeks" who are the most likely to blow them up. The trader/salesman gets his percentage. The company books the business. The investor takes all the risk and loss.

Lewis' own description of the practice: "In need of a euphemism for what we did with other people's money, we called it arbitrage, which was just plain obfuscation. Arbitrage means 'trading risklessly for profit.' Our investors always took risk; high-wire act would have been more accurate than arbitrage. In spite of the responsibility implied by my job, I was ignorant and malleable when I advised my first customers. I was an amateur pharmacologist, prescribing drugs without a license. The people who suffered as a result were, of course, my customers."

Lewis extends the metaphor. The brokerage house is basically a casino. The traders and salesmen are dealers. The markets, like the odds of winning a game of chance, are vaguely knowable, but entirely unpredictable. The investors are gamblers.

The difference, though, between Vegas and Wall Street is that people who go to Vegas know that they are gambling. People who take their money to Wall Street have been told that they are investing.

Lewis, to his credit, quits his job.

If you find yourself a little flummoxed by all of the financial reporting about our current economic meltdown, read Liar's Poker. It will help you make sense of it all.

8 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ian Polk

The classic trading book still

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 13, 2021

Verified Purchase

I read this a few years after I had become a foreign exchange dealer at a major investment bank and double-checked to see if anyone I knew had written it under a pseudonym because it was so accurate in its portrayal of everything to do with that world (they hadn't).
Aside from it's accuracy (to this day, by the way, nothing has changed), this book is hugely funny in places, extremely well-written, and packed with big characters (we all were back then) and exceptionally entertaining anecdotes, written by someone (Michael Lewis himself) as he went through the training program and early employment at Salomon Brothers - the behemoth of bond trading at that time.
Whether you are a would-be trader, current trader, ex-trader, or anyone else, you are highly likely to enjoy this book.

3 people found this helpful

Allan

Very engaging and a must read for anyone interested or involved in the world of finance.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 21, 2021

Verified Purchase

A very engaging and interesting book about how the cogwheel leading up the Great Financial Crisis started. As someone that works in finance and a finance student, it was very interesting to read about the culture of Wall Street in the 80s, the very onset of Bond Trading, Salomon Brothers, securitisation and CMOs etc. A book recommended very much by most people in the industry, all based on real people too. So if you're into Michael Lewis' work or are interested in finance or have at least seen The Big Short, some of these names will be familiar to you.

As the book that gave Michael Lewis his break in his writing career, I must now read the rest of his work too !

3 people found this helpful

Neil Osborne

Amusing Anecdotes of Capital Market Failure

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

Michael Lewis’s account of the bond market in the 1980s is an enjoyable and informative read. He details the rise and fall of mortgage bond trading at Salomon Bros, the origin of the junk bond market and his own experiences as a bond salesman at Salomon Bros. Readers with a knowledge of investment banking will get most out of the book, but others might still find it a good read.

The anecdotes of misvalued bonds, the aggressive culture of Salomons, the short-termism and the dumping of unwanted bonds onto unsuspecting clients indicate that our capital markets are not as they should be. However, the stories are presented in such an amusing style that the reader can at least laugh about the problem. Read it and laugh, even if you should be crying.

10 people found this helpful

Mark Speed

Interesting inside story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

This was published in 1989, and was quite a revelation at the time. It's very well-written by someone who was at the heart of investment banking during what I'd guess would be the point at which it turned into the full-on carnivorous greed-fest for which it's become notorious. Specifically, the author describes life in Salomon Brothers, which had hit paydirt by having a monopoly on certain kinds of bonds right when US fiscal policy made them take off.

One of the most interesting aspects of it is to read how the seeds of the Global Financial Crisis were sown a couple of decades prior to the event.

One person found this helpful

David Smyth

A Michael Lewis Classic.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

Liar's Poker is probably Michael Lewis's best work in my opinion. He's such a natural storyteller that you'll want to read his tale even if you are only half interested in the subject. Michael Lewis is one of the few writers today that makes me take notice when he has something to say. I wouldn't take the time to recommend this title if I didn't think that it was worth the recommendation. It is!

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