Read the book online
Jordan Belfort's drug-fueled crime spree, in which he crashed a helicopter (while high on quaaludes), sank a yacht and arranged midget-tossing in his office, was turned into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, that became an international box office hit.
In 1989 he founded Stratton Oakmont which became the largest over-the-counter brokerage firm in the United States during the late 1980s and 1990s. Its infamous pump-and-dump schemes, a form of microcap stock fraud that involved artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Once the operators of the scheme "dumped" their overvalued shares, the price fell and investors lost their money. Stratton Oakmont would also try to maintain the price of a stock by refusing to accept or process orders to sell the stock. The notoriety of their operations inspired the movie "Boiler Room" well before the blockbuster "The Wolf of Wall Street".
Of course, I had seen the movie which spoilt my taste for the book which remained, only partially read, on the shelves of my library.
Padma bought me another copy of the book as a Christmas present which, as is usual, she gave me a week early as she simply can't wait to see my reaction to it. So I dipped into it - and this time I was hooked.
It proves - if proof was needed - that the book is usually better than the movie. Not that it makes this story of young, greedy sleezebags any more inspiring. In fact, Belfort spent just twenty-two MONTHS in jail, and still peddles his wares as a "motivational speaker" - click here.
