Sports cars, piles of cash, pretty women and drugs. That’s right, we are talking about financial trading. These are the buzzwords of how trading is actually portrayed in the movies and today we are going to take a look at the best ones on this topic.
Trading Places (1983)
This is, perhaps, one of the oldest movies. Even though it does not dive into trading that much, It features a great comedian, Eddie Murphy, which certainly makes this movie quite amusing.
This movie is believed to be based on two stories of Mark Twain – The Prince and the Pauper and The Million Pound Bank Note. The main idea behind the film is that a wealthy person is framed and gets into a jail, and his place is taken by a homeless lad. All of it is a result of just a bet that is made by two rich brothers.
Next to betting money on people’s destiny, these two folks are engaging in insider trading. Their plan is to obtain an orange crop forecast to make profit on the trades of future contracts for orange juice. Yes, that’s right, you can actually trade the future price for the frozen orange juice!
However, the plans of two old fellows become known and they are getting a deserved revenge.
The movie is quite fun and resembles trading from a few decades ago.
The Big Short (2015)
This film certainly represents the highest quality of a trading movie. It has everything: great humour, educative information, great cast and an amazing plot. Well, the plot is actually based on real events that happened during the housing bubble in 2000’s.
The movie shows different trading firms that realised the overrated rating of the mortgages. Unlike simple trading instruments as currency pairs and stocks, housing market cannot be sold short. Meaning that it was not possible to actually gain on the falling price of the real estate. Well, Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager actually visits investment banks and asks them to create credit-default swaps. In other words, he creates a new trading instrument. Essentially, it is a bet against the current prices of the houses.
While the movie provides quite a few useful definitions of financial terms, it also delivers a few important lessons for anyone who wants to learn financial trading. First of all, it shows that the market will also balance itself out, no matter how corrupt the system is. Next to this, the movies provides great examples of conduction on-site research. Finally, it also shows an importance of trader’s psychology, where one should stick with his decisions and analyses.
Boiler Room (2000)
Similar to The Big Short, this one is also based on a true story. However, unlike the previous films, this one actually does not have a happy ending. If you are familiar with The Wolf Of Wall Street, you will be surprised to learn that this movie actually shows the same story of Jordan Belfort, just from a different angle.
While WOWS shows a rich lifestyle with lots of different drugs, smashed cars and yachts and so on, Boiler Room portrays a life of a person that tries to make the ends meet. In this journey, Seth Davis, becomes a sales person at the brokerage house. Well, not an actual brokerage house but something that is called a boiler room – a place where sales people try to persuade just ordinary guys that have no financial knowledge to put funds into very risky deals.
This drama teaches us that there are many scam in the financial world and not every investment service is legitimate. It also shows that people are perfectly fine doing wrong things if the money is right. It is a great movie to watch if you want to experience The Wolf Of Wall Street from the eyes of an employee.
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