Confessions of a Stockbroker
“(Reading this book) is to laugh all the way to the poorhouse.”
From july 1970 to january 1971, while the Dow Jones and 280 billion paper dollars went down the drain, a keen young stockbroker with a diabolical gleam in his eye was keeping a diary. The broker calls himself Brutus. And even a quick dip into his Confessions will tell you why.
In Confessions of a Stockbroker, Brutus comes clean about how he and some of the other Big Boys operate. He tells you how money is made and lost, how New Issues are created and marketed, how to choose a stockbroker – and how to avoid one. Brutus tells you the truth about the Institutional Gods and money managers with feet of clay (or an occasional touch of athlete’s foot); about how to trade over-the-counter and escape rape; about how the back-office crunch concerns you, how news influences the market, how stock market behavior affects business, politics, even the balance of international power; and more. Much more.
In Confessions of a Stockbroker, Brutus introduces you to the people who make the market what it is: to the customer’s men with “your best interests at heart,” the brokers who never listen to complaints, the Deal Makers and the journeymen brokers who never made a deal in their life – to everyone, in short, from the senior partner to the “boys in the back room,” including such denizens of Wall Street as Georgie the Pill, Large Philip, Benjy the order clerk, and Ruthless Roz.
But above all, Confessions of a Stockbroker is about the customer, who keeps the ticker ticking – you. As Brutus says, “One of the points of this book is to instruct you in making money decisions in the stock market by knowing some tricks of common sense and by learning to have a sense of humor about what makes stocks go up and down.”
“You might learn enough here to rectify past mistakes. You may even turn a potential disaster into that most elusive of triumphs, a capital gain. At the very least you can raise hell with your own broker. As long as he isn’t a relative.”
“The gossip and guts of the greatest game of all”: Confessions of a Stockbroker by Brutus.
“(Reading this book) is to laugh all the way to the poorhouse.” —Playboy Magazine
“His book is not only one of the best books I have ever read about Wall Street…but one of the funnier books I have read on any subject.” —Business Week
“This is the best book on the stock market since ‘The Money Game.’ —Women’s Wear Daily
“One of the finer books ever to educate that mass of people who insist on challenging the stock market.” —London Daily Mail
“Brutally frank and disarmingly funny.” —The Cincinnati Inquirer
“This jaunty book bears the same relation to the usual didactic guides to Wall Street as the sea stories of a weathered old salt do to Bowditch on navigation. A mixture of amusement, wonder, and compassion.” —The Christian Science Monitor