The Buy Side
A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess
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- 11,99 €
Descrição da editora
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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. After earning his stripes at Morgan Stanley, he joins the Galleon Group and gets his first tastes of the privileged trader's lifestyle. Jumping ship to Argus Partners, he finds he has "arrived": he wears suits from Barneys, lives in a $9,300-per-month apartment, and indulges in escorts, alcohol, and drugs. As his star rises, so does his partying, until cocaine and booze take control and he begins his fall from grace. Despite the money that continues to roll in; a committed, loving relationship; and the impending birth of his daughter, Duff's downward spiral cannot be stopped. His fast-paced tale will absorb readers, taking them along for a wild ride until they land in a comfortable spot squarely in the middle.