The Wall Street Joke Book

When disaster strikes, when election returns are in, when scandals break, when the ubiquitous racial and sexual tensions of our land blow their PC gasket, when the famous die, it seems the monied men of Wall Street are always the first to craft our national anxiety into a joke. The cynical, educated, three-steaks-a-week, house-in-the-Hamptons representatives of the Ayn Rand in all of us generate the jokes that get faxed nationwide. That's the myth, and this is the confirmation of it. Compiled by four anonymous Wall Streeters, here are the jokes that are sure to come in handy for any commuter, socially challenged business person, or new guy/gal at the water fountain. Slim enough to fit in your shirt pocket, The Wall Street Joke Book can be toted with you for those moments that call for a real-man's guffaw. Here's a taste of the humor that makes this country what it is, from the men who make this country what it is.

Everyone knows that when big news breaks, Wall Street is the first to react--in humor as in finance. Here is the cream of Wall Street humor--more than 500 jokes so hot and risque the author insisted a pseudonym be used for her name.

In The Other Side of Wall Street, Minyanville.com founder and former hedge fund honcho Todd Harrison shares never-before-told stories from the hidden side of Wall Street, including the adrenaline rush of trading at the highest levels, Wall Street’s super-indulgent lifestyles; Harrison’s time in the trenches fighting with (and then against) Jim Cramer; why he left investing completely, and how he returned to earn his redemption. Thousands of readers have tasted Harrison’s story in a recent Dow Jones MarketWatch serialization: now for the first time, he shares his entire extraordinary personal memoir. You’ll walk alongside Harrison through the "golden door" that took him into Morgan Stanley in its 1990s heyday. Share his ringside view of the explosive growth of derivatives, and the disasters that followed. Ride the emotional roller coaster of colossal wins and losses and discover what it’s really like to work with Jim Cramer. Then travel with Harrison through the 2000s, the most tumultuous decade in investing history. Harrison’s seen it all, done it all, and earned perspective and insight available to only a few. If you want to know what it’s really like at Wall Street’s pinnacle–and in its deepest depths–one book will tell you: The Other Side of Wall Street.

Wall Street is a funny business. All you have is your reputation. Taint it and someone else will fill your shoes. Longevity comes from maintaining that reputation. Ask Jack Grubman, the All-Star telecom analyst from Salomon Smith Barney; uber-banker Frank Quattrone at CS First Boston; Morgan Stanley's Mary "Queen of the Net" Meeker; or Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget. Well, they probably won't tell you anything. But have I got some great stories for you. Successful hedge fund manager Andy Kessler looks back on his years as an analyst on Wall Street and offers this cautionary tale of the intoxicating forces loose in the world of finance that overwhelmed sober analysis.

Updated with a new chapter that draws on behavioral finance, the field that studies the psychology of investment decisions, the bestselling guide to investing evaluates the full range of financial opportunities.

“Why aren’t you using LTM EBITDA for credit metrics?” asked the managing director who sat across from me, his widow’s peak clearly visible as he inspected the sheet in front of him. His spacious office looked out onto New York Harbor. “Bust,” said the vice president, who was a slightly younger, douchier version of Widow’s Peak. He slashed his red ballpoint pen across the sheet and flipped to the next page. “Walk me through the debt paydown and your interest rate assumptions,” continued the VP. “Pretty dovish view. Maybe the Fed knows what they’re doing after all,” said Widow’s Peak. He shot a glance at the VP. They shared a chuckle—at what, I couldn’t tell you. This question about interest rates I knew: Dovish, I thought. Doves fly south for the winter, so dovish is downwards…low interest rates— “We’re running short on time,” said Widow’s Peak. He flipped to the cover page of my presentation. “One final point—all pitch decks should have the same title.” “Since this presentation was geared towards an LBO analysis I was thinking—” “No thinking. All decks—same title—Discussion Materials.” Noted. Discussion Materials gives the reader an honest look at Wall Street from someone in the trenches. After graduating from Columbia Business School, Bill Keenan joined Deutsche Bank’s investment banking division as an associate where despotic superiors (and the blinking red light of his BlackBerry) instilled low-level terror on an hourly basis. You’ll join him in his cubicle on the 44th floor of 60 Wall Street as he scrambles to ensure floating bar charts are the correct shade of orange and all numbers are left-aligned, but whatever you do, don’t ask him what any of it means. Leaning heavily on his fellow junior bankers and the countless outsourcing resources the bank employs, he slowly develops proficiency at the job, eventually gaining traction and respect, one deal at a time, over a two-year span, ultimately cementing his legacy in the group by attaining the unattainable: placing a dinner order on Seamless one Sunday night at work from Hwa Yuan Szechuan amounting to $25.00 (tax and tip included), the bank’s maximum allowance for meals—the perfect order.

From the South Bronx projects to the boardroom—at only nineteen years old, Cin Fabré ran with the wolves of Wall Street. Growing up, Cin Fabré didn’t know anything about the stock market. But she learned how to hustle from her immigrant parents, saving money so that one day she could escape her abusive father and poverty in the Bronx. Through a tip from a friend, Cin pushed her way into brokerage firm VTR Capital—an offshoot of Stratton Oakmont, the company where the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, had reigned. She was shocked to find an army of young workers, mostly Black and Brown, with no real prospects for promotion sitting at phones doing the drudge work of finding investment leads for white male brokers. But she felt the pull of profit and knew she would do whatever she had to do to be successful. Pulling back the curtain on the inequities she and so many others faced, Wolf Hustle reveals how Cin worked grueling hours, ascending from cold caller to stockbroker, becoming the only Black woman to do so at her firm. She also discloses the excesses she took part in on 1990s Wall Street—the strip clubs, the Hamptons parties, the Gucci shopping sprees—while reveling in the thrill of making money. From landing clients worth hundreds of millions to gaining, losing, then gaining back fortunes in seconds, Cin examines her years spent trading frantically and hustling successfully, grappling with what it takes to build a rich life, and, ultimately, beating Wall Street at its own game.