Markets in Culture
Wall Street (1987): The Film That Defined a Generation
December 11, 1987. The Dow had bottomed five weeks earlier and most of us on the desk were still half-numb, still adding up what we'd done in October…
Markets in Culture
Famous Traders & Investors
Carl Icahn: The Activist Investor
Carl Icahn is the man who taught American boards to be afraid of their own shareholders. Princeton philosophy in '57, options arbitrage at Dreyfus by '61, his own…
Market Crises & Events
The Hunt Brothers Silver Corner of 1980
March 27, 1980. I was nineteen, a runner at Dean Witter, and I didn't have a silver position to lose. A fellow named Bobby Castellano did. Bobby ran…
Stock Trading Encyclopedia
What Is a Stock Index?
A stock index is a number that summarizes how a defined group of stocks is performing as a whole. It is built by selecting a universe of names,…
Market Crises & Events
The Black Monday Crash of 1987
Black Monday set the template. Every market dislocation that followed borrowed something from the afternoon of October 19, 1987 — the speed of the drop, the role of…
Market Crises & Events
The Crash of 1929
There was an old fellow on the Salomon block desk named Addy Cartwright who’d started as a runner at Hornblower & Weeks in 1931, two years after the…
Famous Traders & Investors
Jesse Livermore: The Boy Plunger of Wall Street
November 28, 1940. Sherry-Netherland Hotel, East 59th. Livermore finishes two old-fashioneds in the cloakroom, walks to the men’s lounge, and shoots himself. The note in his pocket runs…