Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street

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In the 1980's, Michael Lewis was a neophyte bond salesman for Salomon Brothers in New York and London for four years. Liar's Poker is a high-stakes game the traders, salesmen, and executives play each afternoon, but it is also a metaphor for the Salomon culture of extreme risk-taking with immediate payoffs and clear winners and losers.

This is the story of how Lewis survived the training program, inept but mean-spirited management, an aborted take-over even featuring a white knight, layoffs and the 1987 market crash before quitting to find his real calling as a business journalist. While Lewis's career did not take off quickly, he eventually became a highly paid producer, although not in the league of the true top dogs.

Lewis tells the real story of Wall Street in both go-go and crash days with self-deprecating humor enlivened with his ecletic wit. Colorful and well-known Wall Street characters appear such as Michael Milken, Lazlo Birini, Warren Buffett, Bill Simon, Sr. and John Guetfruend. All business students need to read this as even those with advanced degrees in finance such as myself, will learn how things really work. The story of how the junk bond and collateralized mortgage backed security markets emerge is told to fill in a chapter in financial history. Perhaps most interesting is some of the political machinations, rampant at Salomon, which lead for example for Salomon to ignore the junk bond market, allowing others to flourish and eventually attempt to take-over Salomon using junk bonds.

Lewis also describes for all investors the conflicts of interest and lack of governance on Wall Street long before Eliot Spitzer and Arthur Levitt became the champions of the little guy. My next step is to read Lewis's later books.

**** I read this book in my last undergraduate year of college. At that time, Lewis provided me with an eye-opening, first-hand glance of life in the high-flying world of finance (1980's) and the personalities that drove that period forward. It was relevant reading material since I was intending to pursue a career in the financial services industry, and here was a book written by a former bond salesman in the New York and London offices of Salomon Brothers. **** Nevertheless, this book is not limited to only those interested or involved in the world of business. This book is for anybody who is curious how the S&L crisis emerged; how the Reagan administration's deregulations affected the salaries of a select few in the US financial industry; how much the tax burden of the average American citizen grew as a result. This book is perfect for those who dislike the dry writing found in historical textbooks. **** Lewis's anecdotes will leave you in stitches! I am now working in the financial services industry. Most of the people I run into seem to have read this book at an earlier age and most enjoyed it as much as I did. **NOTE** Other "financial history" books that could be compared to "Liar's Poker", but written with very different writing styles: "Merchants of Debt" by George Anders; "Barbarians at the Gate".

Liar's Poker is a funny look at life on Wall Street; especially the life of lower-level employees getting their start in the financial world. Michael Lewis uses the personal experience of his financial career in the Salomon Brothers bond program to tell the larger story of the rise and fall of the entire firm during the 1980s. Along the way he tells some funny stories and gives the reader an interesting, inside look at the fast-paced life on Wall Street. But in the end, the book starts to drag and Lewis's cynical view of the securities industry begins to get tiresome. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what a trader's life is like inside a major Wall Street firm. It is an interesting, initially humorous read that is appropriately not much longer than 200 pages in length.

What a great read. A friend of mine recommended this to me and I can say that it certainly was a refreshing read.

This book tells you about some of the influential people who shaped Salomon Brothers and Wall St in the eighties. I never realised the history that went with Salomon Brothers.

The style is great and I can really identify with the author's early years going through the stages of obtaining and starting a job. Some of the characters in the book are hilarious, you can only just believe they are real.

Only one complaint: sometimes the author goes on for quite a long time with his history e.g. the history of junk bonds and the history of various people in SB. I only wish that there was more about the author's story.

Only one gripe though, and it can't prevent this from being a 5 star book.

Buy it now! Thanks to the book, I am now constantly searching for books like this but this is the only one I have found recounting the story of a salesman as opposed to a trader.

... that Mr. Lewis describes, and worked for the fixed income trading desk, so I know for a fact most of his descriptions are pure fiction. As for the rest, he has taken three years of events, embellished and exaggerated them, and presented them as if they occurred in a single day, creating an image of out-of-control mayhem in the company.

Mr. Lewis is a mediocre writer at best, lacking in financial expertise, and interested solely in pulp gossips and self-promotion. If you wish to read an actually well-written book on Wall Street, read "Barbarians at the Gate", "Market Wizards" or "Money Machine" - skip this trash.

In Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis writes about his journey in becoming a bond salesman and his two years of work experiences at Salomon Brothers. While the book does offer some information about the finacial innovations driving the bond business in the 1980s, I think the principle thrust of the book is an examination of the culture and the personalities of Wall Street trading desks. The first chapter story, which is the basis for the title of the book, involving John Gutfreund and John Meriwether encapsulates the nature of this world.

This book is an important read for anyone who thinks they might want to become a trader/salesperson on Wall Street. If not, it is still a very interesting peek into a world that most people do not understand.

My last comment is a minor criticism of Michael Lewis. Lewis writes in the first person and is obviously a very self-involved individual with an extremely high opinion of himself. This is more evident in his later writings and columns for various periodicals (e.g. his NY Times article on Long-Term Capital was sickening). Despite this criticism the book is still very enjoyable.

For those of us that have an innate disbelief for brokers, traders, advisors and the likes working from Wall Street, this is a must read. For those of you who take lessons and advise from financial advisors, money experts, radio and TV charlatans, this book should be mandatory.

The basic premise (mine, not the Author) is, why someone who knows what will go up or down, will share that with me? By a simple rule of supply and demand (and its effect in price), when more people find out about a `good deal', the `less good' the deal becomes. I.e. the fewer people that `know' that a commodity will go up in value, the better, as the demand for that commodity remains low. The more people that find out about this commodity (stock, bond, investment, metal, etc.) the demand will rise and so will the price. Why will someone that `knows' what will improve in price, share that with you? If your advisor really knew, he/she would not be wasting their time telling you about it, they would gobble up on that commodity, spend all they have to buy more, and then borrow some more. Then the opposite is also true: once he/she accumulated as much as possible of such commodity, then they would have a credible and legitimate reason to `spread the knowledge', so people would start buying and he/she can sell... and the price will go down!

The only reservation which would oppose this logic is that the large and prestigious Wall Street bankers, with such tall buildings and important names, century old reputation, so much marble, granite and stainless steel, etc. `have' to be ethical, professional and give you a good service for your money. They can't be a sham; or can they? Introducing Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker. This is a book that is hard to put down. For a person like me, not very familiar with the doings of the stock market, banks, etc. this is extraordinarily revealing. What an education! This book should be required reading in any MBA program.

The books is very entertaining and easy reading, Lewis' style is fun. There are some stories so amusing that I had to put the book aside until finished laughing. Constant references are made to true names, places and newpaper articles at the time of the events described. All this gives it the color of truth. I `googled' the Author and the book, and could not find a single article refuting any part of this book. Given the fame achieved by being listed as a # 1 bestseller in the New York Times, if someone had something to say, I am sure we would know by know.

I happen to have a neighbor who worked as a stock broker for a decade or so. To my questions, especially to why he quit (he is still young and not a millionaire), he just handed me his copy of this book. He only added `there is a dark underbelly to trading'. And was he right!

This book shows, from the inside, the inner workings of the famous, prestigious and powerful Wall Street banks. Nothing sugarcoated, the plain truth. I read the last 20 pages very slowly because I did not want the book to end.

Somehow Michael Lewis went from Art History major at Princeton to investment banker with Salomon Brothers. In this book he shows that he understood what these markets are all about, in a way that eludes the grasp of people who may spend years majoring in finance, going to law school or business school and slaving away in these same markets without a clue as to how the whole thing hangs together.

Using bond trading theory to trade whole companies and industries, as Lewis explains Michael Milken, is especially helpful, and it suggests that Warren Buffett is doing the same thing--buying companies by acting as a "preferred" lender.

The "us v. them" relationship between an investment bank and its customers was interesting, and in our current market times, I see a lot of this in how financial planners do the same kind of petty ripoffs that Lewis describes using bigger dollars and bigger customers. It's possible that today's minor aspiring financial planner types could read this book and aspire to be an even bigger malefactor of great wealth. It's refreshing that Lewis bailed out of the business, and this book stands the test of time as a continuing accurate diagnosis of the problems with sinners running markets. The trouble is , there will never be anyone else to run them.

At the end of the book, he seems to have a weakness for praising John Meriwether. Isn't that the guy who lost a huge sum of money in the recent "Long Term Capital" hedging disaster? Even that proves the point of this book, which is that none of these guys care at all about anything but the dollars to be made in front of their nose at the moment. Exactly as Adam Smith said.

Liars' Poker is the quintessential business novel. Everyone businessman I know has either read it or heard of it. So, I decided that I should check it out.

This book is an account of Michael Lewis' time at Salomon Smith Barney in the mid 80s, at the height of the junk bond craze. He perfectly describes the atmosphere of competitiveness and the vast rewards everyone was reaping as a result of the boom.

What came as a surprise to me is that Lewis describes the mortgage bond market, an obtuse and vague instrument, very clearly and in a way most non-business people could also understand. This explanation also serves to show why these junk bonds ultimately collapsed.

Then, of course, are his hilarious descriptions of his orientation, his bosses and coworkers. To read about these outlandish characters is worth the price of the book alone.

So, to close, this book is a classic for a reason. It is informative and well written, but manages to be hilarious at the same time, a feat few authors can achieve. Read this book at all costs.

A well-written book that exposes the "Money-is-God" attitude of Wall Street. From the profane, fat, slovenly, polyester-wearing traders that stuff their mouths all day long, to the frat-boy Ivy League trainees who heave paper-wads at the Salomon directors speaking in the training classes, one gets a highly accurate picture of the inside of a Wall Street investment banking firm.

I was particularly amused by two anecdotes; the author had his first encounter with Salomon Brothers when he was seated next to the wife of a Salomon director at a St. James Palace dinner hosted by the Queen Mother. Of course, as close as she would get to the guests would be to stroll out of the room followed by her trained Corgi dogs who genuflect every 15 seconds. Perhaps insulted by the Queen Mother's indifference at her presence, the director's wife shouted out, "Hey Queen, nice dogs you have there!" after she passed. The second amusing anecdote occurs when the author is interviewed several times but not offered a job. Eventually a friend tells him that Salomon does not actually offer someone a job. Consequently, the author calls up the firm and says, "I accept the position", upon which he is welcomed as a new member of Salomon Brothers.

The book also exposes the dirty little secret that Wall Street makes its money by entering into adversarial relationships with their clients. The author refers to this as "taking the other side of the fool". Specifically, Wall Street attempts to keep spreads on securities artificially wide in order to pocket that spread, for which they were ultimately busted by the SEC and heavily fined. They also hype stocks that they know are garbage because they have investment banking relationships with those companies (Merrill Lynch was just busted for this by the state of New York and heavily fined). Also, the investment banking fees they charge their clients to raise capital are grossly excessive, but their clients are too naive to understand this, or perhaps more accurately do not even care.

Ultimately, the decline of the company that is chronicled in the book provides the following insight; even though Salomon always tried to hire the best and the brightest, this "talent" was eventually negated by the incompetence that arises from any hierarchical organization. That is to say, the brilliance of the few is always neutralized by the incompetence of the many inherent in the corporate structure.

I read the comments of both the customers and critics and was excited when the book arived at my home. Then, after reading the book, I re-read the comments to see to see if they were perhaps talking about the same book I read. This was pure drivel. Read the back cover on the book...then multiply that drivel by 250 pages.

Probably, I misunderstood that I would learn something from this book about finance or markets in general and would be able to use these ideas to add to the bottom line - make more MONEY. But it seemed like my goal behind reading this (or any other) book was too clearly defined and this book did not help at all. If you have too much time, nothing to do, and are looking for something to pass time then read this. But if you want to achieve something such as gaining insight into trading, selecting, analyzing stocks or securities etc then do not waste your time. This book has no direction, no substance, and not much to learn from it which can be used to produce results.

While Lewis does a fine job as he writes a personal memoir of his time at Solomon Brothers in the mid-1980's, he soon loses focus of his main storyline. Lewis wanders off for three chapters to describe the creation of a home mortgage market and the personalities involved. It is as if Lewis or his editor suddenly decided that the amusing anecdotes of life on Wall Street were fine pulp, but needed to be framed in the context of historical substence in order for the book to be seen as respectable. (Ironically, Lewis's account of the rise to power of Michael Milken is more gripping, perhaps because Lewis was more directly affected by Milken's ambitions.) The evolution of equities as an investment is ignored almost completely, leaving the reader to wonder how, in the span of two years or so, the equities department of Solomon Brothers could go from "powerless" to surviving the layoffs started days before the crash of '87 to being the reason Solomon Brothers had its worst year in history. The author is inconsistent in his granting of pseudonyms or anonymity, naming a great many employees by name while protecting a chosen few. All in all, Liar's Poker is a quick, sometimes amusing account of Lewis's time at Solomon Brothers, but little more.

*
This book is for everybody. Even if you've never worked in finance in your life, you will still think it's funny and entertaining. Besides which, you will get a thorough education on the bond market and its growth in the mid eighties.

Since this was one of the books often referred to by MBA programmes, I was hesitant at first to read it (one of my pet hates is all those silly books about "how to" from supposed "experts" who have since lost all their money or credibility because they were too greedy or didn't see change coming - which is why they had to write the book). Yet, I found myself in need of literature one day and spotted the distinctive yellow cover (in Singapore at least). I was attracted immediately by the title and then proceeded to read the first paragraph. I almost sat down promptly on the floor to keep reading it - a good sign that this was good reading.

Lewis has a talent for story telling. He combines this talent with an uncanny ability to be able to explain a very complex market in a very simple way. The "pull" of this story is that you KNOW it really happened. It is easy to cast your mind in the author's shoes, and BE on the trading floor with him. You can feel the excitement when the market turns, taste the sweat of other traders, hear the noise of the commotion on the 42nd floor, and sense the tense environment created by several hundred people in one area all trying to make a quick buck.

The story begins by an explanation of the game "Liar's Poker" itself. From then on, the gambling begins and the dice continue to roll ... the very bizarre way in which Michael gets a much sought after position at a prestigious investment bank ... to an intriguing story about the movers and shakers at Salomon Brothers, and the company's inevitable downfall.

Pseudonyms, of course, are used. But we can all imagine what "the Human Piranha" looks like and certainly know what type of person this is. Women can despise the competitiveness and prejudice that reaches its ultimate point in this type of environment, and is practised only by men, for men.

The book tails off a little at the end. The author (rightly) describes how his career takes off with the company and his inevitable resignation from the firm (Michael, I'm totally with you -- it takes a certain type of person, without scrupples or morals to be able to sustain themselves in this type of workplace).

The only slight weakness is that the author tries to justify his choice at the end (there's no need to, because we understand why early on), by saying "money isn't everything". Sure, it is not everything, but it's a lot to those who haven't got any.

*

I have read a lot of 'insider' accounts of high finance and I am amazed by how much they all seem to owe Michael Lewis for writing "Liar's Poker." From "Monkey Business" to works of fiction like "All I Could Get" to even movies such as "Boiler Room," all of them seem to have borrowed heavily from Lairs Poker.

In this book Lewis tells the story of Solomon Brothers from its ascendancy from a small bond trading house, to the world's most profitable corporation to it's decline and eventual reorganization.

Lewis narrates his story from the perspective he had as a Solomon bond salesman in the mid 1980's. This book shows off two of Michael Lewis best talents:

1.) The ability to covey the feeling of how it was while he was there.
2) The ability to write about events/activities in the past (or halfway around the world) AS IF HE WERE THERE.

In this book, Lewis is a witness, a critic and a historian all at the same time and in comes together well. Reading this book, I kept think that Michael Lewis is too observant, insightful, and people-oriented to stay on Wall St. Maybe deciding to write this book, getting himself out of Solomon while getting back at his superiors, was just another smart trade.

Maybe someday I'll read another `insider' account book that will blow me way, but for now "Liar's Poker" is the gold standard for the genre.

I am an experienced,well educated, retired, 63 year old entrpreuneur that is making a 20% return in this down market. I read a lot, but I have learned to read the 5 star and the 1 star reviews before wasting my most valuable asset, my precious time, and then buying a book like this. Look at the reviews if you are like me you will find that Michael(they'll never call him Mike) Lewis thinks this is a game not his future. After graduating from Princeton as an Art Major, ourl ittle micheal spent 2 years at Saloom Brother's as a flunky. Never mind, I too was a flunky for a small investment banker at his age while attending Univ. of Washington but then again I couldn't draw so I studied Samualson in Economics 101 and know why oil went from $147 to $42 in the last 6 months. Hint it has something to do with how prices are set at the margin. The lower reviewers called this author's opinion drival and a waste of time and these reviewers seem older, like me. But the book got the highest star rating I have seen, so now I feel out numbered by the young naive, economic ignoramuses who are a few years out of a liberal collage, who will miss the opportunity to see oil go back up soon and are head for a life of financial mediocracy and jealousy.
If describes you buy this book.

Meanwhile I am still looking for a worthwhile,rigorous read about the challenges for the Obama nation because in this market you can monatize real knowledge a sthe ignorant herds fear to double downat life's poker table.
I have two beautiful daughters who are also young and naive, but I hope they never date little michael. I have supported them for 25 year's and while they are working hard making it on there own, no one needs an anchor. Of course again maybe Michael will be the next Rembrandt.

Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker is a must read for anyone trying to understand the 2008 crisis in mortgage lending and home ownership. In fact, a new edition of the book should be published with a forward by Ben Bernake or Hank Paulson. The autobiography describes a mid-1980's newbie to Wall Street and his induction into the fraternity of mortgage traders at Salomon Brothers and junk bond traders at Drexel. This book rises above a rite of passage story because of the financial chaos which happened during the next three decades.

The 41st trading floor of Salomon Brothers is where millions of dollars exchange hands in minutes. There is a blue collar culture of practical jokes, profanity, Mexican food and pizza. The characters might have come right out of Damon Runyon or Animal House. The main difference between the interns, the traders and the clerks is neither their demeanor nor education but their wealth. In contrast to other books which tell us about the best and the brightest, this book describes ordinary people with excess body fat, perspiration, greed and wealth.

As more homeowners face foreclosure and the US dollar loses value, it is not clear what message to derive from this book. Were it not for these failures of economic policy the book would join other interesting stories about the rich and privileged of Wall Street. But because of this failure of oversight, the book takes us from humor to cynicism and from a sense of national pride to a feeling of national shame.

Is there a ratio of capitalistic reward to risk which is unconscionable in a democratic society? Can this behavior be limited or controlled by financial transparency, tax code, money supply and credit leverage? How do we avoid these consequences of the creation and destruction of capital without moving down the path of socialism? Can we ever put to rest the saying that behind every great fortune is a great crime?

I want you to realize that Michael Lewis is only one perspective albeit a very biased and skewed one at that. If you speak to any one who worked at Salomon they will bluntly tell you that the book is not completely factual. Michael Lewis has an agenda, and it is very obvious that he has it in for the Salomon and Wall Street traders. And, he is willing to bend the truth and exagerate things to make the people look like monsters. Using the endearing term of Human Pirhana speaks to this point. I loved the book, because it gives you somewhat of a perspective on the life of traders, but I don't think you truly know what it is you're up against until you go and do actual trading. I wouldn't believe everything you read in Liar's Poker, and I would weigh each word carefully, because Meriweather isn't the only playing Liar's Poker here. Enjoy, and don't let the book discourage you from hedge funds and investment banking, especially if you really love finance.

...you can waste your time and save your money by checking this out of your local library.

If you want to get an "inside view" of the inner workings of Wall Street during the excessive gyrations of the '80s, then read Den of Theives - that book is well written and well worth the money!

What turned me off about this book was the structure and the writing style. The first half of the book was essentially the author relating fortuitous circumstances that were the product of Serendipity. He was simply in the right place at the right time, had virutally no idea how he got there, felt out of place the whole time (even when he was raking in the Big Bucks in NY and London), and so now he thought he'd wwrite a book about it. I also got the sense that he was trying to assuage some guilt from his association at Salomon Brothers. He was there, he made a lot of money, good for him - get over it!

I was also pretty disappointed because the subject matter has A LOT more potential. I might have actually enjoyed it - had I not read Den of Theives 7 years earlier, and already had some idea of how things took place. But, if you can get it for $5 or less (including shipping), and you have little to no knowledge of what an investment banker's life is like (and you haven't also seen the movie Wall Street (which covers the same highlights in this book)), then it's probably worth it.

I did like the wrap up he did towards the end of the book, relating where he had heard everyone from the firm ended up...althought that seemed a little rushed...

This is a great book. A home run. While I am not an industry insider, I did read it while I was getting an MBA from the Michigan Business School and enjoyed it a great deal. It provided a great deal of background to what I was learning in various finance classes. Mr. Lewis helped me see the people who make these markets work and move and that it isn't faceless formulas free of emotion finding perfect prices; rather it is ambitious men (and women) ferociously and sometimes crazily pursuing their own financial interests.

The book is amazingly funny without being slapstick. There are some amazing images - not only the Meriwether games of Liar's Poker, but the food being delivered to the physically rotund mortgage bond traders, the bond trader who felt like the price would rise and then kept buying billions of dollars in bonds to prove himself right. I loved reading about the training he received and what he was taught about selling bonds and how those folks really do view their customers. Some of the institutional stuff is a bit dated (but still valuable as history), but the human stuff still rings fresh and true because people and still, well, whatever it was they were back then.

If you just want an entertaining read - read this book. If you want to read about the early go-go years in the bond trading and the pre-boom boom years on Wall Street - read this book. If you want to learn about some of the big names in finance and what they did - read this book. You get the idea. I am saying you should read this book and you will be glad you did. Really.

...

In short, reading Michael Lewis' account of his tumultuous two-year stint at Salomon Brothers in the mid-1980s delivers all the pleasure and enjoyment of reading good pulp fiction. Lewis is -- much to my surprise, I must admit -- an extremely talented writer with a gift for metaphor and the art of character description and analysis.

One of the endearing things about this book, I think, is that it is laced with a certain self-deprecating tone. Lewis' basic thesis (although I don't think he really believes it) is that the the most glaring sign of Salomon's impending demise was that it started hiring people such as himself. Despite many self-effacing comments, however, Lewis points out repeatedly that he was the highest paid -- and thus best producing -- young bond salesman at Salomon during his tenure and seeks to assure the reader that he isn't some scorned ex-employee who couldn't hack the perils of life on the trading floor.

Lewis dedicates a few chapters to explaining the rise of the mortgage trading desk at Salomon and the junk bond market under Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham, although neither have much to do with Lewis' career as a government bond salesman in Salomon's London Office. Did the author think this gave proper perspective and background to the telling of his personal story or was it an effort to pad out an already short piece of work? Probably a bit of both, is my guess.

In sum, if you approach this book (as I did) as a roman a clef, with all the exaggerations and artistic license associated with fiction, rather than a legitimate memoir, you'll probably get a lot more enjoyment out of it. It is funny, fast-paced, often incredible -- and will quickly expunge any thoughts you once had of being an investment banker, no matter how high the salaries might be.

I have read a good number of books covering Wall Street in the 80's and I really think there are better books out there, Den of Thief's, Predators Ball. This book is entertaining, well written, and gives us a view we normally do not have, the traders. With the movies Boiler Room and Rogue Trader, you can see that they take from this book. I think the best part of the book is the behind the scenes, almost sub plot story of Salomon Brothers and Wall Street in the eighties.
The down side for me is that this book really just focuses on a small part of the whole 80's Wall Street, Junk Bond and M&A world. I would have liked him to have tried to captures so of the other things going on in his business t the same time and try and relate them to what he was doing. The ending is also about 10 pages too long. Overall this is an average book.

You can neglect all the reviews and go straightly to any local bookstore to read the first chapter which describes the game "Liar's Poker". You will buy it then, I bet. It's not a trading book which I had expected, but a true story told by a bond salesman in Salomon Brothers about how bankers "stole" or sometimes "robbed" investors shamelessly. Though I still found two chapters quite boring, the rest are really interesting. Even you may not like the story, you will learn to be more careful when your private or personal banker calls you for a deal or two! Finally, I must agree with Management Today's comment that it "Should be made a legally required component of every MBA course".

Though Liar's Poker was written roughly a decade ago and Wall Street has changed somewhat since then, it is still a humorous and pertinent read. Lewis' prose flows well and pauses occasionally to bring his reader historically up to date. As a memoir, it is the only one I've found that truly takes you into the mind and life of a Wall Street trader. Perhaps it is time for someone to write about the late 90's equivalent of the hotshot Lewis...the Wall Street Research Analyst.

The book is hilarious. It's still one of my favorite gifts for friends in school or starting out in the business. Some people don't like the middle of the book, which is a bit of a history lesson. But the history lesson is a good one and should be be compared to in the industry today for those who are in the business. The beginning and the end are hilarious

Last summer I worked on Wall Street for Goldman Sachs (the Salomom Brothers of the 90's). Going to NYC I expected to find the phone throwing backstabbing, disrespectful jerks in the book. What I did find was 90hr 6 days work weeks. The traders and salesmen were highly intense, intelligent, and most of all stressed. I did come across a few traders who still had the same mentality of the traders in the book. However, most of the "Liars Poker" types Wall Streeters have left. I actually met about three people in the book including Mike Mortara now head of fixed income @ Goldman.

My advice read this book. But, even after reading this book if you want a Wall Street career be prepared to give up you life and sleep.

This book should be required reading for all wanna be I-bankers. The author very convincingly describes the inner workings of a major financial institution. From the outside, the public only sees the expensive suits and tall glass buildings and are suitably impressed by the knowledge and skills of those who works inside. But the author takes us behind the doors to show frighteningly how the lifeblood of the world is controlled by a bunch of 25 year olds who have little idea of the magnitude of their actions.

Unlike (nearly all, or all) academic economics books, which 'explain' that arbitrage does not and cannot exist, Lewis explains to us how the big bond houses live from arbitrage (buying low from the government or somewhere else and selling a bit higher to you and me). The book is a rare, a highly entertaining and very informative jewel: Lewis rightfully and poetically calls brokerage houses 'full servive casinos', far better than Monte Carlo or Las Vegas. Not only will they accept and place your bets, they'll also lend you (a large fraction of) the money needed to place your bets (margin)! A very good book to read now (1/27/00) during the 'wild ride' before the present big market bubble goes: POP!

Unfortunately, Lewis tells us too litlte about Meriwether, who later seduced two of the top finance academics (they were willing) and, with their aid, constructed the huge, uncontrolled experiment in 'equilibrium theory' called 'Long Term Capital Management' (LTCM). Their philosophy, also believed uncritically by most working economists, was and likely still is: Equilibrium will prevail (even in the absence of restoring forces!). For the continuation of the story where Liar's poker leaves off ('portfolio insurance', arbitrage and more arbitrage, and the formation and collapse of the bubble called LTCM), see the new book "Inventing Money".

As an analyst on Wall Street (yes, I do make a lot of copies) I must confess this was insightful reading even for me. If you want to work on Wall Street or you want to know what your broker really thinks of you, read this book. But to update the epilogue a bit, I temped at Salomon in 7 World Trade while waiting for my current job to begin. Much has changed. Real efforts have been made to combat the sexism in the system, though far more than mere vestiges remain. Each morning in the final months of the merger with Smith Barney pink slips were handed out and the process was very judiciously calculated. The pall of this book hung over each lay off. So be assured, if you have not read Liar's Poker, you are not culturally literate on Wall Street.

One final word: The Market is Efficient! Only the investment banks made money on the buyouts of the 80s. With Liar's Poker in one hand and A Random Walk Down Wall Street in the other, you'll have the basic insights to manage your relationship with both your broker and the market.

If you want to know what the big Wall Street bond firms were like, before the MBAs took over, this is the book. It's a great portrait of 1980s Wall Street, the way that traders and investment bankers used to appear (in the eyes of the young MBAs they hired) and the ridiculous training that newcomers received. It's not a pretty picture, but if you want to know what happened recently you have to remember that the current mess happened when a different group was in charge. That group included Michael Lewis's peers, the well educated, affluent Ivy Leaguers who run Wall Street today and took the places of the BSDs. (Lewis's term meaning big, swinging...well you get the idea.) The current mess was also created by the banks, who were just beginning to enter the market in the 80s.

Engaging as it is, studying Liars Poker to understand today's Wall Street is like studying the Carter Administration (before the Reagan administration privatized a thousands of governmental operations) to find out how federal government "really works." Who were the BSDs that Lewis describes? In 1975 a white man (and you had to be both) with smarts and a recent degree in any subject from a state college, could get a job at a bond firm by using connections. Connections were everything. This guy's boss probably did not have a college degree. (The college degree jobs went to stock brokers and private and commercial bankers.) The key talent for 1970s traders on the way up was the ability to crunch numbers very quickly without pencil and paper. By 1985, with talent and nerve, the bond trader who had started ten years before, could be making millions for himself and for his firm.

This guy was the BSD that Lewis describes. And this guy hired the MBAs who were only beginning to have a foothold when Lewis worked at Salomon.

Michael Lewis tells the engaging story of how a talented MBA joined Salomon Brothers and was simply astonished by the culture. What he describes isa culture where a formal education takes a back seat to chutzpah. Lewis's descriptions of uneducated, but astonishingly rich, men doing things like meeting the Queen Mother in England, are hilarious.

What Lewis cannot tell you (because the book was published so long ago) is how Wall Street replaced those guys with men and women who look and sound like Lewis. Salomon, once a firm of 7000 headed by its founder, is now part of Citigroup. The BSD's with their coarse language, huge lunches and cigars have been replaced with highly paid MBAs who know exactly what looks bad on an expense report, would know what to say to the Queen Mother. Is this better? Well, it's different.

I worked on Wall Street, at big banks and at Salomon, before and after the change.

The typical BSD that Lewis describes couldn't get a job on today's Wall Street. The Liar's Poker portrait of the gross, uneducated, cigar smoking, overweight middle-aged trader is something that every firm makes it a point to avoid. Firms hire young people (emphasis on young) with fantastic academic backgrounds and Hollywood good looks. Traders today are still mostly male and white, but they come from affluent, highly educated backgrounds. The firms hire more women and minorities from the best schools so while the numbers still show mostly white men, the annual report pictures and the EEOC audits go better. Sexual harrassment, which was rampant in the 80s still happens (as it does everywhere) but because of huge lawsuits, firms have HR departments that will come down on any employee (includng traders) like a ton of bricks if the firm's money or reputation are put at risk.

The current Wall Street mess wasn't created by Liar's Poker crowd. Trading with computer models was something few understood. Today's trader is tied to his computer and Blackberry and there is no assistant to enter the tickets. There are no tickets to be hidden or manipulated. By the early 90s the BSD's described in this book, older men with their lightening fast calculations, street smarts, nerve and passion for the game, had all but been replaced by Harvard, Yale and Wharton MBAs.

When this book was written the Mortgage Backed Securities Market was just taking off. Most banks were still holding their loans on the books, not selling them bundles. Fannie Mae still thought it was part of the government and hadn't gone completely off the reservation. It was the Michael Lewis's peers, the ones who did not get out when he did, along with a myriad of other people involved in mortgages and credit, who caused the current mess.

The BSD's do make a good target though.

Liar's Poker takes the reader through the Go-Go era of Wall Street in the 80s, where banks expanded rapidly and ethics seemed to take second priority to making piles of money. (The more things change, the more they stay the same)

Three big stories are at play here. First is the creation of the Mortgage Backed Securities business at Solomon. Creating this market generated a ton of money on the street, and also highlighted both the challenges and gains from creating a new business from scratch. It also demonstrated the knives pulled out in both stopping a new business from starting, and then fighting for scraps of credit.

The second story is of junk bonds - a vehicle initially created to fund less creditworthy companies, but eventually used to finance corporate takeovers. This is the Michael Milken Drexel Burnham story. This was the other major move of finance in the 1980s, though in reality junk bonds are not as awful as the hype surrounding them. (Providing financing to less creditworthy companies is still a very valuable activity, and many funds did very well on this.)

The third story, and perhaps the most important, covers the conflict of interest between banks and their customers. Many banks, traders and salesmen take their customers long term best interest to heart. This is not neccessarily a given, and Lewis highlights his own experience in trying to walk the line.

Liar's Poker has earned it's place as required reading for all moving to Wall Street. It should also be required reading for investors.

Michael Lewis knows how to tell some nice anecdotes about life on Wall Street, but after the first 20 pages, it's largely a tale of the stresses of bond trading. He does go into some detail about how the deregulations of the 1980's allowed for many interesting types of trading, but it remains largely dull for the rest of the book.

If you're looking to be entertained, a better book about Wall Street would be Bombardiers by Po Bronson. After reading both books, it's very obvious that Bronson was heavily influenced by Liar's Poker, but by being pure fiction, allows for more interesting and sympathetic characters and is far funnier.

Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker is a revealing account of his days as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers, a bulge-bracket investment house. In the 1980's, bonds were in their heyday, and consequently, investment houses dedicated a big part of their operations to the almighty bond. Enter Michael Lewis. Fresh out of the London School of Economics, he relies on -- at least partly, anyways -- some chance connections to land a job back on Wall Street. Lewis has a knack for fully developing the characters that made Salomon Brothers and it is both enlightening and entertaining to revisit his life in the frenzied 1980s on Wall Street. As hilarious as Liar's Poker is, it also, in some respects, is a bit of a sobering read, knowing now how much Wall Street has disintegrated since Lewis' time at Salomon Brothers. bought this book for 1 cent (plus $3.99 shipping, of course) and it remains one of my all-time favorite books. A must read for anyone who has any interest in business/finance or anyone who wants a closer look at what life was really like as a bond salesman in the 1980s.

This is a great book. I mean, everyone else says so, so they can't be wrong. Yes, I want a job on wall street.

LIAR's POKER by Michael Lewis is an interesting exploration of the excesses of investment banking, trading in the 1980s. The author's many anecdotes throughout the book are often fairly amusing, particularly his description of mortgage traders as well as the students who sat in the back row of his Salomon Brothers training class. More importantly, however, the book covers many important themes. I believe the book actually has something to teach the reader about mismanagement and the consequences of office politics. Furthermore, the nature of the broker is exposed insofar as his relationship to his employer and his client are concerned. That is, the broker will ultimately serve his employer at the expense of his client when necessary.


I recommend this book not only for amusement and insight on the go-go 1980s trading years, but also for the reader to pick-up on some of the themes of management, the impact of office politics, and the history of investment banking and trading.

This book is terribly overhyped. Overall, it's a pitifully dry memoir of a man who never made it big on the street.

I would recommend Rolfe & Troob's _Monkey_Business_ over this book.

Sell your soul and buy this book with the change! I read this book -several times- a good few years back and having just picked up a new copy and finished it in one go, it is still a classic read after all these years. Lewis's behind the scenes peek at Wall Street's 'Greed is Good' mentality of Salomon's bond dealers in the 1980's is a book that gets a hook in you from the very start. People still talk about Liar's Poker after a decade, it's that good. Read it and believe it.

Liar's Poker, written by Michael Lewis, describes life on Wall Street during the 1980's and the four years the author worked for Salomon Brothers. Lewis discusses the evolution of the bond market, how mortgaged-backed securities came to exist, and the misfortunes of missing the junk bond market. The fantastic character portrayals are absolutely hilarious and they make the book come to life. Liar's Poker depicts many business ethics issues such as gender and race discrimination, consumer and investor protection, and hostile work environments.

Lewis begins by describing John Gutfreund, Chairman of Salomon, and the Liar's Poker game. Gutfreund is portrayed as a manager that was both feared and respected. He was once a trader and managed Salomon with a trader mentality. Traders by nature are gamblers, so they are willing to take bets, or better yet, they are risk takers. Gutfreund apparently loved playing the game, Liar's Poker, because if a person was good at it, he was probably a good trader as well. The game is played predominantly by Salomon traders whereby a group gathers in a circle holding a dollar bill close to the body to hide the serial numbers. One player begins by making a bid such as "three fives," which means that all the players in the circle have at least three fives in their serial number. The player to the left can either challenge the bid or up the bid by saying three sixes or four fives. Only in a challenge do the players reveal the serial numbers on the bill. Essentially, it is game that rewards players for their ability to bluff or deceive the other players. Lewis uses the game to illustrate Salomon's corporate culture and its leadership.

Liar's Poker does a fantastic job explaining how the mortgage trading business originated and how Salomon/Ranieri created mortgaged-backed securities. Lewis also details more stories about his escapades after the training program. The book is easy and fun to read because it is presents an accurate picture of Wall Street firms. Business ethics issues are presented through the text. The issues that are identified in this report are sexual and ethnic discrimination, hostile work environments, and unethical business practices. Many more ethical issues are present in the Liar's Poker. This book should be read by anyone hoping to join a Wall Street firm or simply a trading environment.

When you were young, your parents probably instilled you with a respect for adults. Michael Lewis performs a public service by showing that adults don't always deserve this respect, and sometimes even behave worse than children. Indeed, as Michael puts it, Wall Street is a vast playground where corporate executives can be bullies and rob people of their lunch money.

The truth is that young people accepting their first job on Wallstreet probably have no idea what they're getting into. After four years in the meritocrasy that is academia, most college students are unprepared for the brutal darwinian slugfest that awaits. College professors do not offer instruction on how to deal with abusive managers, back-stabbing coworkers, and double-talking executives. New hires (i.e. geeks) are beaten and kicked until they either learn how to fight or perish. Life is cheap on Wallstreet.

This book is a definitve recount of the madness which typified the 1980s. Michael lets us rid shotgun with him on his journey through the capital markets. Along the way, we meet strange indigenous animals like the Human Piranha, Sangfroid, and Dash Riprock. We learn the native language (i.e. f---speak) and observe a tribe of bond traders engaged in ritualistic gluttony. Michael does not try to shield our eyes. Rather, he provides the reader with an uncensored look at Salomon Brothers and life in the trenches.

Michael's sketch of John Gutfruend, Salomon's then CEO, is both droll and insightful. In so many words, Gutfruend was a king without clothes. He smoked cigars and affected a british accent to convey the image of an English gentleman. He worked very hard to give the impression that money was secondary to the "contributions" that Salomon made to the business community. Yet, the minute that Gutfruend ascended to the throne he initiated an IPO that would both line his own pockets and enrage the founders. Gutfruend was also responsible for a number of disasterous mistakes, like trying to open an office in London in an effort to become an international bank. By the end of the book, there is no doubt that Gutfruend is naked.

If there is a message to Liar's Poker, it's that finance is a zero-sum game. What this implies is that your broker is not necessarily looking out for your best interests; he may be looking out for his own. As the E*trade commercial so aptly put it, "if you're broker is so smart, why does he work for a living?"

Liar's Poker is one of the most insightful accounts of the investment banking world that one could read about without being an insider. It is in most respects a brutal story about the ruthlessness and total lack lf scruples that govern the world of high stakes finance but nevertheless an insightful account for the consequences of the explosive surge in bond markets from 323 billion at the end of the 70ies to 7 trillion by mid 80ies, following the FED's decision in late 1979 to let the rates float. With uncanny precision, methodical approach, and copious amounts of humor, Michael Lewis takes us on an insider tour de force of the investment banking business as embodied in the Salomon Brothers, Lewis' employer between 1985-87, during their time of fame and what made that company great, or shall we say notorious. Salomon greatly capitalized on the golden opportunities in bond markets starting with mortgage bonds, going through all related exotic instruments and derivatives, and ending with the junk bonds. Greed, ambition, and deceit were ranked top priorities at all organizational levels and duping the clients for corporate gains was the norm to attain success, recognition, fat bonuses, and promotions. Last but not least every was in pursuit of the much coveted title of Big Swinging Dick (women qualified for that title too) and even the occasional Balls of Brass title, the culmination of all deceitful selling techniques to uninformed/disinformed investors (read victims). The portraits of the Salomon high rollers are scary but at the same time comical; John Gutfreund, the CEO of Salomon, Lewie Ranieri, the mortgage bond superhero, who started from the bottom, in the mailroom and made it to be the top Swinging Dick (for a very short period though...nobody lasted too long), Michael Milken of Drexel Investments, their sworn enemy, all of them are unforgettable. Michael Lewis writes with insight and chilling realism. He cuts deep into what the deal is all about without fear of exposing the dirty, even illegal side of the business he was part of during the mid eighties, including his own role in ripping the naive investors off as a senior bond salesman.

Overall great reading; witty, sarcastic, satirical and captivating from start to finish. The reading is easier if you understand finance, especially bond pricing and bond market mechanics, otherwise it may become a little cumbersome. Liar's Poker particularly makes great reading for all Wall Street aspiring candidates, it's good to be prepared, you seldon know what awaits around the corner...

Lewis is a witty guy, and this makes it an enjoyable read. He does try to make some serious points, and basically demonstrates that an Art History major makes for great conversation and metaphors, but little true insight. Lastly, always beware of people who hold themselves out as the only rational/honest guy in the bunch.

While it has been some time since I read Liars Poker it still brings a smile to my face by bringing back fond memories. What has renewed my interest and motivated me to write more of a validation than a review of Liars Poker was my current reading of one of Michaels other books - The money Culture. Having spent 42 years in municipal finance with, 23 of those years as a municipal bond analyst/portfolio manager/investment director, at a major institution I can speak with some semblance of authority. You would have to say that at various points in my career I experienced some of what he talks about. He does a nice job of pointing out the nature of characters, some of who, use to prey on unsuspecting porfolio managers. While most of his referrences are related to the corporate fixed income side, Munis had their share of thugs, thieves, but mostly honest people that were there to help you in various ways. Among the thugs and thieves are firms that are, in some cases, no longer in business. Who ever reads this book should keep in mind that the author, in citing what occured during the '80's, was in fact laying the foundation for what was and is ocurring in the capital markets during these turbulant times. Whether he knew it or not is not of material importance.

After reading the reviews on Amazon, I was excited when this book finally arrived. However, after reading 3/4 of the book, I felt the reviews were highly misleading. Lewis is by no means a highly gifted writer. This book is sloppy and disorganized. He throws around dates and names in random pages, which leads the reader out of the loop. Most of the names could have been left out and weren't important to the story. A brief synopsis of the story goes like this "Yah, we made a lot of money in the 1980s at Salomon Brothers". And for the a whole synopsis, reiterate that 100 times in a 100 different ways. I'm so disappointed with this book.

It provides a good picture of the Wall Street during the 80's but it is sometimes tiring when describing the personality of some characters.

Reading Liar's Poker today confirms its status as a modern classic about Wall Street. Michael Lewis depicts the boom years at Salomon Brothers in the mid-1980's with a style that is simultaneously sharp and laugh-out-loud hilarious.

As a complete outsider to Wall Street, I enjoyed the opportunity to get this insider's perspective on the culture of investment banking. Lewis cleverly combines his personal narrative of getting hired, going through the training program, and landing a job as a bond salesman in Salomon's soon-to-overheat London office with a more objective recounting of the key figures and episodes that led to Salomon's downfall.

Lewis's most colorful portraits are of Lewie Renieri, the man who practically invented the mortgage bond market, and Michael Milken, the `junk bond king' who made Drexel Burnham into Salomon's toughest competitor. Strangely, Lewis's depiction of John Gutfreund, then chairman of Salomon, is less sharply delineated.

For all the `animal house' behavior going on at Salomon Brothers--and Lewis tells a lot of unforgettable stories from the trading floor--the firm was also making serious financial innovations during that period. Lewis ascribes the faltering of Salomon to John Gutfreund's lack of leadership, especially for not retaining the mortgage traders who had made the firm so wealthy and for dismissing the market in junk bonds during its most profitable stage.

Michael Lewis recounts his experiences at Salomon with a kind of detached irony; he avoids either glorifying the wealth Salomon created or deriding its culture of greed and gluttony. He recognizes that he and his fellow traders were being paid far more than they were contributing to society: "...if social contribution had been the measure, I should have been billed rather than paid at the end of the year." But Lewis does not condemn Wall Street. Ultimately, he suggests that Wall Street functions best when salesmen and traders value long-term relationships over making short-term profits.

There are few authors who have the skill, knowledge, and the ability to entertain as Michael Lewis does in Liar's Poker.

Liar's Poker is about Wall Street 1980s from the view of Salomon Brothers where he worked. It goes into the founding of the mortgage market as we know it today and even gives a glimpse into how the closeminded views of upper management almost destroyed one of the greatest forces on Wall Street almost overnight.

It should also be noted that this book serves as an important case study into business ethics. The book gives a clear view of the unethical atmosphere of Salomon Brothers which, in retrospect, should have been a red flag to the almost destruction of Salomon in the early 90s when Paul Mozer, one of its traders, was found to have broken a new rule restricting how many bonds were purchased at government auctions.

In any event, the book is charmingly wonderful in nature and worth a read if only for pleasure. From a business standpoint it shows what not to do in order to run a successful company and from a trader standpoint it shows the dangers of screwing your customers over to better your own situation.

This should be required reading analysts and associates along with `Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle' and `Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success'. Each gives a different and illuminating perspective on the ups and downs of the many different departments that make up large, institutional finance organizations. Moreover, there are in totality especially useful if you have no idea about how finance actually operates on a day-to-day basis beyond what you see in your economics courses (definitely the case at Harvard, U Chicago, MIT and the like, where these firms heavily recruit). Can definitely give those without and an internship or direct experience the ability to level the playing field to a large degree.

I read this because I was required to for (MBA) school. I read the entire book over two weekends; a difficult task for me because of poor reading speed and poor attention span. I generally do not like to read and find most of what I read a painful bore and highly unbeneficial. This book was an exception. This book gives us an interesting insight into Michael Lewis' real world experience, something we cannot get a real feel for in traditional textbooks. If it is not already, this book should be required reading for all MBA programs. Thank you, Mr. Lewis, for sharing your story.

The book is a good read and entertaining for those interested in Wall Street. This book should be required for anyone thinking of getting a job on the Street. Some stories may be hard to understand for readers not familiar with finance terminology.

"Liar's Poker" is a memoir of Michael Lewis' 3 years as a bond salesman for the investment firm Salomon Brothers, Wall Street's premier bond brokerage in the early 1980s. It follows Lewis' career from his serendipitous introduction to the firm, through his initiation as a trainee in 1985, to 1988, while recounting the history of Salomon Brothers' rise to bond dominance and subsequent fall brought on by excesses, poor management, and failure to compete in the junk bond market. Lewis' literate, swiftly paced prose paints a vivid picture of Salomon Brothers' boorish, competitive culture amid the frenzied atmosphere of a rapidly changing late 1980s economy. It shifts effortlessly between trading floor anecdotes and explanations of the mortgage trading department without seeming to digress. Well-written, insightful, and often hysterically funny, "Liar's Poker" is one of those rare Wall Street books that is immensely entertaining -and mostly true. I don't know if someone with no interest in finance would enjoy it, but no knowledge of the bond market in required to understand it. I have heard it said that "Liar's Poker" is accurate in its portrayal of Salomon Brothers but less so in the author's position at the firm. But it hardly matters if the account is somewhat fictionalized. It's just a great read.

Liar's Poker is a personal account of life at Wall Street's most successful firm in the 1980s: Salomon Brothers. The novel follows the wild roller coaster ride that was Salomon Brothers; from their ascension to the top of the mortgage-backed securities market led by the charismatic Lewis Ranieri to their eventual descent into Wall Street mediocrity. The author, Michael Lewis, chronicles his personal experiences starting with Salomon's frat-like trainee program and following his career across the Atlantic to the London offices of Salomon Bros. Along the way he describes the competitive, cut-throat atmosphere of bond trading at Salomon and fills in spaces with a variety of colorful, charismatic characters.

One character that stood out to me was the "father of securitization" Lewis Ranieri. Ranieri, a college dropout, got his start in Salomon Bros mailroom in 1968 and managed, in 10 years, to become the head of their Mortgage department. At the time the rest of Salomon Bros looked down their noses at Ranieri and his blue collared group of mortgage traders. Their department made less money and was comprised of fat, obnoxious, loud traders. Lewis Ranieri personally traversed the country selling the idea of MBS to investors and politicians and ultimately lobbying in Washington D.C. His hardwork paid off as he created a market and made Salomon Brothers hundreds of millions of dollars. His hardwork and success was paid back by Salomon when they fired him in 1987. Such a shame.

Back to the story though...Lewis's retelling of the raucous, juvenile attitudes that purveyed at Salomon is hilarious. Certain portions of the book get a bit too technical when Lewis over-explains stock market intricacies. Unfortunately some parts read like a textbook. I almost put the book down about halfway through due to the boredom I found reading the ins and outs of junk bonds, MBS and other trader jargon.

Thankfully I didn't put the book down. I perservered and was rewarded with an engaging, enjoyable second half of Liar's Poker which focuses on Lewis's evolution from trading floor "geek" to his final status as the ultimate trader, a "Big Swinging Dick." Excellent book whether you're into the stock market or not. Lewis isn't the world's greatest writer, but he certainly gets the job done.

I you're really into investment banking, or just bond mechanics, don't let the three star rating get you down. I study finance. I liked the book.

I wouldn't say that it is a good book, so much as it is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in a) working on Wall Street (for historical perspective) or b) interested in bonds and, again, their history.

Three stars for the general population. For broker/banker/trader hopefulls, five stars.

I had long heard nothing but great things about "Liar's Poker" but it was not until I found myself in an airport bookstore before a cross-country "red eye" that I decided to read it. It was no disappointment--the book reads like a novel, and Mr. Lewis blends a perfect mixture of sardonic irreverence with a traders' "greed" to land the bull's eye. As someone familiar with bond trading, "Liar's Poker" was still informative and an enjoyable read; and quick too--the entire book was finished by the time my flight landed in LA!

"Liar's Poker" is an insider's view of life at an investment bank. It is written in a cynical tone, with plenty of self-deprecating quips such as "It [end of year bonus] was more than I had contributed to society; Christ, if social contribution had been the measure, I should have been billed rather than paid at the end of the year."

The book portrays Wall Street as a testsoterone driven money making factory. It is OK to gouge the clients as long as it makes money for the firm. In fact, such activities are actively encouraged. The bottom line is always the bottom line. It matters not if you have to crawl over the corpse of your best friend to stab your colleague in the back. If, at the end of the year you made a lot of money for the firm then you were in line for a fat bonus and a round of back slapping from the "Big Swinging Dicks". Wall Street is a fine example of Darwinian forces at work. It is a near pure meritocracy where the strong survive and the weak are swallowed whole.

I found the book highly entertaining. The author is not a professional writer, and this shows in certain sections of the book where the prose is unpolished. Nonetheless, a highly entertaining sojourn into Salomon Brothers and if you have even a passing interest in finance or investment banking, I recommend this as a good read.

This book is hilarious. I didn't think a bond trading floor could be so amusing, but Michael Lewis proved otherwise. Look up a picture of John Gutfreund online before reading the first chapter.

My expectations of this book were perhaps mislead. I thought that this would deal with more the generalized view of Wall Street. However, it really concentrates on the lives of traders.

Lewis does shed some light on Wall Street trading in general, including a good description of mortgage trading and junk bond trading. However, this book sort of throws it into the mix. I wasn't sure what Lewis was trying to do. Sometimes it felt like a history book, sometimes a biography, sometimes an economics lesson, sometimes a comedy. It felt haphazard and lacked direction, and with the writing style presented, it lacked a certain amount of fluidity.

It was fun to learn the different people in Wall Street. From the obese, abusive traders, the short sighted and greedy executives, the brown nosers, to the "back row" trainees. It's basically a fun little description of office life at Solomon Brothers in the eighties, not an exciting expose on the finance industry as the cover would like you to believe.

This was a really funny book that also gave me quite an education in investment banking and the world of finance. "Liar's Poker" is very well-written, and keeps things moving. While the subject matter may be complicated, Lewis keeps it comprehensible to those of us who don't have an MBA. It's fascinating to see how the big players work the markets - and in some cases, manipulate them outright. Indeed, "Liar's Poker" gives us a front-row seat to the creation of the mortgage-backed debt obligations that are commonly traded today, and that allowed the current real estate bubble to inflate as large as it has.

Lewis' analysis of Salomon and its problems applies in many respects to professional service firms in general. Having worked in a law firm during the recent boom years, I can say that rapid growth and an abundance of cash can lead to hubris, disorganization, and a loss of core values. Lawyers, accountants, and anyone else who works at a professional service firm will particularly enjoy this book.

This book has received several one-star reviews from persons who apparently either believe it concerns poker card strategies or think that they have hit upon a clever way to promote someone else's books. They are wrong on both accounts. This is an important document from the last financial slump of the late '80s and early '90s describing how stock brokers are given incentives to dump losing stocks on small clients as a way to prop up the returns for their employers' own in-house accounts. Hence, the ability to claim that X bank has been able to achieve a phenomenal return on its own investments--just think what X bank can do for you! Well, thanks to this book, now we know: X bank can unload all of its junk on you and laugh maniacally as your account evaporates. Timely reading for the current financial scandals.

This book is to Wall Street as Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" is to the restaurant business. It's an inside look from someone who not only was there, but lived to write the tale. It's easy to identify with Lewis, who begins his story while he's interviewing for jobs in college. One thing leads to another and he's soon making money and (mis?)-handling millions for his customers and earning the reputation of a "Big Swinging Dick" at Solomon.

Lewis provides great insight into the bond trader's mindset, ranging from the abuse of interns to the creativity required to create a mortgage bond after-market through internal politics and external sales. The traders are continuously glancing at the financial numbers and running "what if" scenarios, imagining the impact on the bond market. The details of the instruments being traded are very well explained, even in financially complex configurations like tranched mortgage liabilities or stripped bonds. Just as much attention to detail is provided in descriptions of the paranoid manic-depressive tendencies of the traders on both the buy and sell sides. Lewis's first "exploding" customer provides a particularly poignant contrast to the equally risky goings on within Solomon.

Lewis really moves the story along. He has a sure hand with dialog and scene setting, and the first person point of view adds to the tension. Thankfully, "Liar's Poker" doesn't get bogged down in psychological or social criticism; there's not even any Monday morning quarter-backing by the author-protagonist. The story is told and the interpretation is pretty much left up to the reader, which I find refreshing.

I also really enjoyed Lewis's tale of Silicon Valley VC through the eyes of Jim Clark, founder of SGI and Netscape, in "The New New Thing". I'm afraid I just wasn't buying Lewis's more recent "Faster", which is much more analytical and much less (auto)biographical.

returns returns and returns this is a must not to buy too many stories and returns

This book, and Predators Ball, really started the boom in financial writing as it pertains to what it is like to actually work on Wall Street. Having spent 3 years working for 2 different firms in research I can say that some very interesting people work on Wall Street. Some are very average people with phenomenal work ethic whereas some are quite comparable to people out of the Wild West.

Anyone who is considering going into the financial services industry in trading, sales or research should read this. I tell you to read it because it does describe how cut throat the business is and it does provide some entertaining insightful look at characters in the industry. Liar's Poker provides a good top down look at the characters and process of Wall Street. This book, in particular, focuses on the rise of Soloman Brothers and its trading.

Other books of interest would be John Train's Money Masters and New Money Masters (2 different books) that discusses the world's best portfolio managers and traders. Both are excellent reading.

In many ways, it is not clear what sort of book Lewis intends to write. At times, it is a memoir, at times simple gossip, and in others a guide to how the street works. It is a testimony to Lewis' skills as a journalist that he largely succeeds in each of this tasks, giving clear explanations of both the rise of the mortage market and Milken's revolutionary ways with junk bonds, while managing to capture the surprising undercurrents of life in a Wall Street investment firm. It is, needless to say, not pretty -- and Lewis cynically (though honestly, I think) captures the petty interests and conflicts of interest that dominate the trading floor. I am not sure where to put my money now, but I am certainly keeping it away from those banks! There are, however, some unexpected heroes in the book. Lew Raineri's hard charging mortage desk, a bastion of old fashioned ideals (which is itself a good and a bad thing), is portrayed in loving and often hilarious detail, despite the lack of first hand experience, while Michael Milken's junk bond antics are singled out for special appreciation. These choices may seem suspect now -- Raineri's success didn't outlive the competition and Milken is now widely regarded as a villain, but Lewis' perspective has the advantage of capturing the time in which these views were developed. As history, it is fascinating if not always correct.

The final pages of the book depict, somewhat artificially, Salomon Brothers as it grapples with a take over bid. The action, while dramatic, seems more like a pretense for a big finish than the climax of the story Lewis is telling. The market went on, and so did Salomon brothers. But Lewis left, and his reasoning is unclear. He was certainly successful, and stood to be more so. His stated reasons seem unsatisfying, and the distance between his experiences during the book and his reluctance to share more intimate details of the forces that compelled his decision ultimately renders the conclusion unsatisfying.

This is a small complaint, however, and the book is certainly worth reading. Look for When Genius Failed for an update on some of the characters of Liar's Poker. It follows John Meriwether's ultimately unsuccessful attempts to revolutionize options trading and proves a compelling sequel (of sorts) to this book.

I thought this book was a fascinating truth-is-stranger-than-fiction insight into the high-powered Wall Street subculture. It is a must-read for people thinking about pursuing Wall Street jobs or CNNfn/CNBC junkies who want a behind-the-scenes look at those big investment banks you hear about all of the time. Lewis suffers from a one-sided cynicism about the people and culture of the street, but backs up his attitudes with engrossing, yet completely horrifying tales about the way 80's Wall St. traders behave.

How boring, a book on bond trading, I thought when someone gave me this book for a gift. Thanks a lot (grrrr)! But, boy, was I happy to have been given this book after I started it. It is riveting, hilarious, educational, insightful. Lewis is utterly a disciple of Tom Wolfe's, and he almost does Tom Wolfe better than Tom Wolfe does, and that is a total compliment. While Wolfe has disappointed with his fiction writing, we can be grateful that we have Lewis to turn to for brilliant nonfiction, now that Wolfe isn't producing any (other than the occasional article in FYI). I even read LIAR'S POKER twice. The sign of a truly wonderful writer, is one who can write about something seemingly boring, and make it riveting. Lewis pulls that off here.

This book is interesting and still timely for a number of reasons. Michael Lewis was not hired by Salomon Brothers by going through the usual channels. That is, he didn't just send in his CV and go through a series of interviews. He did have or was finishing his master's degree at LSE and that would ordinarily be considered very competitive. But the details are quite intriguing. There are also several pages dealing with John Meriwether of Long-Term Capital fame. Meriwether, of course, directed the largest financial collapse in history, and he was trained at Salomon as were many other of these infamous bond traders. Its evidently no longer true that "Hedge funds are very strongly regulated by those (the banks) who lend the money" (see the article on Alan Greenspan in BusinessWeek, 12 Oct. 98)! Or has the FED always been in front of the eight ball? You would think that Frank Partnoy (FIASCO) would REALLY be upset with this idea rather than fuming about a zero-sum game in which there is always a winner and a loser with fairly normal contracts. I can't think of a worse case nuclear-waste derivative than 80:1 margin with long and short positions on every possible bond, CMO, and currency in the world all controlled by an arrogant hedge fund manager. This unheard of leverage could only be done by dozens of banks loaning out money on collateral that was already used to procure a loan across the street. Where was Frank when this was going on? Morgan Stanley was not even involved directly with LTCM, and perhaps that explains Frank's silence. Even to this day those at LTCM have a mantra that goes like "You know the model worked really well except for this tiny little problem", and that phrase is usually followed by "You don't understand (we are just too smart for you), all that was wrong was a tiny bit of bad timing and not quite enough leverage". Yes, a little tiny non convergence in interest rates did all that damage, and you boys and girls should be in jail. No retail broker would ever do anything like that. My answer to all this is that if you have spent 15 min studying the Black-Scholes equation and geometric Brownian motion of stock prices, you have wasted more than 14 min of your time. Lets hear from Frank. I think what I found most interesting in Liar's Poker was Mr. Lewis's detailed explanation of the development of the mortgage security market at Salomon Brothers. This info is not readily available, and I have no reason to doubt Mr. Lewis's account. If Salomon was the top investment bank when this book was written, times have certainly changed, because they are not even among the top three investment banks today.

I am told that the average tenure of a new investment banking recruit is under three years. This is mainly because they are worn our and weary. Apparently, an eighty hour week is considered a short week and anything less than showing up in the office six days a week means that you are not committed to your job. This never sounded like an attractive profession to me. I strongly suggest that if you are thinking about entering the investment banking world, or just thinking about investing, you should read LIAR'S POKER. What drives this industry to hyper-activity? Part of the answer must be that that is the way trades are made and business is done - or always has been. It's The Tradition Stall from THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, by Mitchell, Coles and Metz. The industry also suffers from The Bureaucracy Stall - lots of inefficient policies and rules, and The Communications Stall - They don't really all get the same information at the same time. Perhaps, by replacing the bad habits of investment bankers with new good habits based on totally rethinking the way this business is done (see Mitchell's Eight-Step process), they would earn more and have more fun. Now that's a 2,000 percent solution! (Solving a problem is a 100% solution. Achieving 20 times those benefits or getting there 20 times as fast, equals 2000 percent.)

This book is tremendously overrated. Lewis' writing style, while amusing, is also quite amateurish. Plus he seems to have a major superiority complex - is he really the only honest guy on Wall Street? Puh-leease.

If you a dying to work in the industry or imagine the stock market to be a big mystery this book might be more engaging.

Personaly I found it a little boring and hard to get through. I am not impressed by the stories at all, and found it like listening to a sales person in a bar.

In today's economic climate this book remains a pertinent cautionary tale. We don't seem to learn much from our political approaches and faliures in monetary matters, perhaps because of greed and narrowness of view, and this book brings these historical matters to mind in relation to current problems. Perhaps this should be required reading for all in politics who can affect monetary, banking, and investing policy. The author manages to keep the readers interest, and despite the known and obvious conclusions to the tale, he makes it almost like a mystery raging to a bad end. Excellent read, pertinent today, and unfortunately likely tomorrow.

I found this book very good to read especially during the current financial crisis. Even though the author wrote it in the 80s, it shows the culture and business of investing. The author used to be a bond salesman in the New York and London offices of Salomon Brothers.

The description of the S&L crisis is in a way similar to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. The greed and obsession with money made both crises possible. After reading this book, I realized that no matter how much regulation we have, we will experience similar events. Yesterday, it was the S&L crisis, today it is the subprime mortgage crisis, and tomorrow the greedy minds of Wall Street will create something even more interesting that will have more devastating effects.

For those who are not familiar with the business of high finance, this book will be an eye-opener. It shows what traders, salesmen, and executives of Wall Street firms do every day to make money by taking huge risks with the hope of a payoff. I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

Liar's Poker is an engrossing chronicle of the rise and fall of Saloman Brothers during the 1980's. It cannot be possible to write a book about bond trading that is both so entertaining and informative. If you want to understand the cultural shift regarding debt in America over the past 30 years, I think you'll find this story to be alarmingly relevant. I for one am thankful Lewis decided to "tell the story rather than go on living the story", as I never knew Wall Street could be so humorous.

Great read and good inside look at Wall Street in the 1980s. Haivng just finished Barbarians at the Gate (which I also highly recommend), I was searching for a similar read. An attorney for the RJR Special Committee recommended Liar's Poker as a great view inside. He was dead on.

This is an incredibly poignant book now that the market has collapsed and many of Michael's "characters" have come to justice or some other demise. The story is well written and, for me, an incredible job considering that I'm not a financial person. Once I picked it up, I could hardly put it down; and, that is saying a lot for a book on finance and Wall Street. Now that we find ourselves in the midst of the desolation created by a handful of incompetent, but clever, swindlers, this book clearly shows the reader how this happened. It is entertaining and scary at the same time. Lewis' writing is captivating and I plan to read his other works. Highly recommended.

Michael Lewis does an excellent job describing the internal history of Salomon Brothers in the 1980s. He writes an easy-to-read narrative that is not only a pleasure to read, but is also a sarcastic and detailed examination of how business is done on Wall Street. While Lewis writes specifically about Salomon Brothers, it is not difficult to apply his various criticisms toward other firms.

I felt the book was split implicitly into three parts. First, Lewis describes his first impressions of Salomon Brothers, the training program, and his initial experiences getting the job. Second, he steps back from his autobiographical narrative and explains the bigger picture. He tells the reader of the people who ran and built the firm in New York, the crazy things that happened on the trading floor, and how the mortgage trading department grew from a one-man team to a behemoth that would dominate Wall Street. Finally, he returns to his autobiography and talks of his experiences as a bond salesman in the London office. He outlines the fateful events of late 1987 and finally describes his last day at Salomon in 1988.

In the third part, Lewis also gives a brief history of Michael Milken and his rise to power at Drexel Burnham. Lewis gives the reader a lesson on how junk bonds became popular (Milken essentially made the market for junk bonds, just as Lewie Ranieri did the same for mortgage bonds). He describes how the demand for junk bonds greatly exceeded the supply until a new use for junk bonds was found - financing leveraged buy-outs by corporate raiders.

This book is a very enjoyable read. It is not as vengeful as Monkey Business (also a great read, but very different), but more descriptive and historical in nature. I was a bit reminded of Barbarians at the Gate when reading it. I felt that I got a great overview of Salomon Brothers in the 80s and of the people who made the firm great, especially Lewie Ranieri. Lewis also does an excellent job describing various finance concepts that he discusses throughout the book. He keeps things simple but he doesn't leave out details that would leave me hanging. That was very thoughtful of him, in my opinion.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the corporate culture on Wall Street in the 1980s. It's a quick, easy, and enjoyable read.

Pros:
+ great historical overview of Salomon Brothers in the 80s
+ sharp, insightful, and satirical - an excellent look at Wall Street corporate culture
+ lots of interesting detail on people who built markets in the 80s
+ good definitions and descriptions of several financial concepts
+ fun to read!

Cons:
- a relatively small window into the history of the firm
- ends in 1988; would be great to see another edition wrapping up Salomon's story

Good book, just not the cult classic I heard about. If you're not into stocks, bonds, the market, etc it's not for you. I think the author was very humble abous his own success, but in the end I think the book itself is overrated.

An entertaining look into the life of a Salomon Brothers bond trader in the 1980s. The book offers a cursive overview of the financial innovations during that period, but the real contribution is in examination of the culture and the personalities of the Wall Street traders. Not without some embellishment, Michael Lewis does a great job of communicating the eccentricities and absurdities of the traders - 'the big swinging dicks'. At the very least, 'Liar's Poker' is an entertaining read, at best, an insightful look at what (and who) turns the wheels of our financial institutions.

I thought this would be more interesting. I still haven't finished the book and I bought it over 6 months ago. It's just dry. If you've ever worked on the floor of an actual exchange this is like kissing your sister. I have a totally different view of trading in the 80's and institutional trading isn't it

Much of what Lewis' writes about is true. Particularly as a trainee investment banker you are thrown in and expected to know how financial markets work. I have been a banker for 20 years and can only now confidently say I know half of what I am talking about. Mind you most clients I talk to really don't have a clue - another anecdote that Lewis brings to life. This is a great read for those with insight or interest in the Wall Street set, fast paced and so funny because its true. On top of it all, it offers great insight into an interesting part of financial history, much of which has parallels to the 2007 Credit Crisis - happy reading

When I bought the book, I expected it to be a funny narration of the wall street life in 80s. And the first 70-80 pages kept me quite entertained. Well written and funny ! Its the second half of the book which becomes more rhetorical with a dull narration of the events and developments on the Wall street. Perhaps my expectations from the book were unrealistic. I would recommend Monkey Business if someone wants to have a real laugh at the wall street world.

It's an entertaining book for everybody that drags you back into time when the mortgage bond industry, as we see it today, was beginning to get started.

Lewis's narration is in a brilliant manner which even a non financial person will finds interesting. I having worked as a mortgage banker can relate to many things described in its chapters. Though, it sums up a lot of what happened in a more captivating & a fictional manner.

Begin reading and very soon you will also starts to feel a part of that world in that fascinating era. Lewis discusses the evolution of the bond market, how
mortgaged-backed securities came to exist, and

But, very soon you also begin to trust you instinctive disbelief of mortgage brokers ! About midway through this book you also begin to draw an interesting lesson.........one can make an awesome amount of money using judgment based on with the right financial analysis skills but to make tons of more money than the awesome amount one need to be an aggressive trader ;)

This was a story which had to be told. And it had to be told from the inside. It couldn't have been done any other way, and Michael Lewis does a fairly god job of it.

The book essentially tells the story of the rise and fall from wealth (and grace) of Salomon Brothers, and in particular, their mortgage trading group. Those times were clearly heady ones, with the creation and destruction of ridiculous amounts of wealth - from thin air. (It's a more common phenomenon now given the increasing sizes and reaches of the global financial markets, but this probably represented the earliest of the really big cycles.) Lewis takes us deep into that world, giving us a view from a prime seat in the middle of the best action of those times - at Salomon Brothers. In doing so, he is able to create a fairly strong feel for that world, with all its extravagances and idiosyncrasies, while simultaneously providing a fair amount of objective narrative on the internal and external events. His fleshing out of the characters in the book is well done too, which allows the reader a fair level of involvement and empathy with the events. Another strength of the book is that Lewis never gets too technical, and is able to explain fairly complicated markets in terms simple enough for most people to understand.

On the flip side, I have to caution you that at the end of the day, Lewis might have been a good banker, but he's not a great writer. The book could have been taken to a different level altogether in the hands of a better writer, and much of the strength of this book is eventually derived from the story. That said, overall, I still think Lewis has done a very credible job, and the book is a very worthwhile read for everybody, not just bankers.

Great book!! Gives great inside into what trading, and sales really was like at the peak of the 80s. Really great book if you find Wall Street or any-related interesting. Highly Recommended!!

Very fun, easy read. Michael Lewis brings you into wall street with a very easy to read style. You get the feeling that you're really learning about something new and at the same time, it's about one of the largest transfers of U.S $ in history. So if you like business, but don't like to read much, this book works for you!

Michael Lewis writes a very interesting, funny account of bond trading in the eighties. While I often like to escape in fictional novels when I read, this memoir of Lewis' experiences on Wall Street are entertaining enough to keep me coming back for more.

While some reviewers found his technical descriptions of mortgage backed securities, junk bonds, etc. a bit boring, I enjoyed learning more about the various investment options and how they got started. Lewis definitely gives you an inside look at the tricks and deception that could be used by the financial services industry - hoping that we "suckers" will be prompted to buy enough to make them the big bucks.

And that's the point of the book - this game is all about making money for the trader and their employer, screw everyone else. Lewis includes hints about how the money and reputation as a "Big Swinging Dick" is enough to overcome any feelings of guilt about "blowing up" companies or clients (the nickname alone tells you about the lack of women in the industry).

I also enjoyed learning about how traders see the world - and how fear is what really controls the market. If you understand fear, you become a great seller of bonds or equities. In fact, Lewis makes it clear that no one can really predict how the market will go. The most successful people in the industry are portrayed as being either great salesmen or having a true (though rare) understanding of the big picture effects of a causative event (in other words, how people react based on fear after an event).

There is a deeper message here too, if you are reading closely. Michael Lewis decided that trading his conscience for making money was not for him. He felt that he and others in his profession were reaping benefits "out of all proportion" to their value in society. He makes no attempt to change the reader's views on the right or wrong of the system - he lets us judge for ourselves.

Anyone working for a financial services company - especially if you are in an unrelated part of the business - should read this book. It offers great insight on what can seem like perplexing aspects of the company culture. And if you don't work for a financial services company, you would still be better off reading this book, if only to learn how not to be a "sucker" for the financial gain of a "Big Swinging Dick."

An intriguing book. For someone with little exposure to the financial sector or Wall Street, this is a fascinating introduction to how a big brokerage house gets to be big. Sell! Sell! Sell! And let the buyer beware! Hilarious, scary and infuriating, it's enough to make you cash out your portfolio and put your money somewhere safe, like Vegas. Highly recommended.

Michael Lewis launched his successful career as an author with his book Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street, which is both a youthful memoir and a journalistic look at the inner workings of Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street firm that grew fat trading bonds and then crashed and burned. The book takes place, roughly, between the years 1984 and 1987, and so I wasn't surprised that the book reminded me of the movie Wall Street - just replace Gordon Gecko with Salomon's head John Gutfreund. At the beginning of the book, Lewis has just been hired, quite unexpectedly, by Salomon, and he takes us through his trajectory at the company, from the cut-throat training process to his days as a bond trader in London. From this vantage point, Lewis was able to watch the company, emboldened by spectacular success in the 1980s, become a symbol of corporate gluttony. Along the way, Lewis profiles many of the company's outsized personalities. He also delves into the intricacies of the bond market in such a way that the arcane becomes pretty readable. The book is also filled with anecdotes about the conspicuous consumption of those times and the raucous, inelegant trading floor, filled with foul-mouthed traders who threw phones and insults and reveled in their gluttony. Lewis' revelation was that the company (and its competitors) made profits at the expense of its customers, and, while the period that Lewis chronicles is interesting in its own right, its impact is somewhat diminished by the many corporate scandals and Wall Street improprieties that have occurred since the book was first published. Against this backdrop, Liar's Poker is no longer an exceptional story that defined an era, it is merely another moment in the cycle of Wall Street corruption and ensuing retribution that continues today.

I picked up a copy of this book after reading Moneyball - Michael Lewis's book on the business of baseball (an excellent book that I have now read several times). Although Wall Street does not hold the interest to me that baseball does, this is an entertaining and informative book on big money trading in the 80's. I was engaged from start to finish with the personalities of the folks at Salomon Brothers (the firm which Lewis trained and worked for). Although I am not familiar with the details of bond trading, this was a facinating journey and well told. Fun to read about Milken, Perelman, Icahn from the days when they were only known by readers of the Wall Street Journal and not household names. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys finding out about corporate culture and how the personalities of the individual can shape and effect the whole. Then pick-up Moneyball and see how a maverick personality has started to effect change in baseball.

This was a very good read. It kept me entertained the whole time. I came away from it with a better understanding of the bond market and many of the Wall Street firms.

I read the book after having it recommended by a friend who has a friend that made a killing as a bond trader. He was constantly relating stories from his days trading, and said the book was very close to the way it was when he was trading.

Even if it is only half true, I realize that they make their money from commisions, not from making my money grow.

If you are looking for Wall St. entertainment, I highly recommend it. If you are thinking of investing all your money with brokers, again I highly recommend it so you can rethink that plan.

I picked up this book because it is highly popular among investment bankers, whose fat wallets were enough to take this book seriously. I am not an investment banker and do not intend to be one but I was keen to find out what makes Wall Street special. The book not only satisfied my curiosity but also was pleasantly amusing.

The author traces the glorious and gloomy times of Salomon Brothers, a big financial enterprise in which he worked long enough to be able to tell this tale and become a rich man. He explains some financial innovations of Salomon brother's in lay man's terms, which makes this book very readable for all.

The author's self-deprecating humor and his vivid analysis of the people he came across in his organization make the account entertaining.

Whether or not the author's opinions on technical matters in this book are meritorious-I am not qualified to say. If you are a finance novice and curious to find out about life in that universe, you will find this book worthwhile.

Liar's Poker provides the reader with a wonderful account of one of Wall Street's most formiddable houses being left by the wayside. Embodied in the compensation structure at the firm, Lewis' tale describes vast numbers of star employees fleeing Salomon for greener pastures. This book gives an excellent account of how a once mighty firm was driven into the ground by the haplessness of an ineffective board personified by John Gutfreund.

Without doubt, this is one fo the finest accounts of what really happens on Wall Street that one will read. It truly dives into the depths of ignorance on the trading floors where no one truly knows what they are doing or where their futures will lead them.

I fully recommend this book to anyone interested in the greed and decadence that plagued the 80s culture. For the business buff, this is a combination of humor and sadness of a once great firm that cannot and should not be missed.

Basically a typical "story" about a typical financial firm. Some fimilar names if you have read other books of the time. Author himself doesn't show up until last quarter of the book. A passtime if you have nothing else to do, but definitely not worth 100+ 5-star reviews

Michael should never have wasted his time - and sullied his reputation - by writing his paean to Jim Clark, the elder statesman of the 'dot bomb' generation ("The Next Next Thing") By doing so, he missed out on the real story of the age. But hey, no one's perfect. "Liar's Poker" about the Wall Street of the 1980s and is one of THE finest books about the realities of that perenially shaddy business. Anyone who read it, and took its message to heart, would have seen the 'dot bomb' coming from a mile away. Too bad publishers weren't buying THAT story. Lewis is a thoroughly entertaining writer. "Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street" is a newly minted subtitle of which I thoroughly disapprove. There has been no 'rising' since 1980. It's been fraud piled upon fraud as Michael knows better than most. I worked on "The Street" in the 1980s and his account is 100% accurate - which should have scared the heck out of any investor with a brain.

Still the best book on finance ever written. Others have tried to copy but none has come close to the original. A must read book for everyone interested in Finance and making a career on Wall Street.

If he didn't describe it with such wry, amused detachment, Michael Lewis' chronicle of his time at Salomon Brothers during the 1980s could easily be mistaken for a modern installment of Dante's inferno. Each day on the trading floor, as computers blinked and eager brokers barked into the phone, bright young people yielded to siren call of greed. Personal destruction was the goal of the game, as Darwinism ran rampant and the strong metaphorically devoured the weak as a matter of course.

Somehow Lewis avoids turning this often disturbing display of human baseness into a morality play. His sense of humor is most likely what allowed to him survive, and even succeed, during his time in the lion's den. In "Liar's Poker", he uses it to great effect, painting vivid portraits of the colorfully flawed egoists who drove the bond market into excess and chaos. For all their blustering, Lewis reveals many of the redoubtable players in the bond game to be sad and insecure, and avoids the temptation to pass judgement on them.

It's no wonder that Lewis finally answered his calling in journalism, because he displays amazing skill here, and not only as a writer and observer of the human condition. He's equally adept at ferreting out facts, analyzing them, and presenting them to lay readers in an entirely comprehensible way. In the course of his rollicking story, he manages to deliver a pretty detailed lesson on the basics of finance, the bond market, and the ways it impacts our daily lives.

As a neophyte himself when he went into investment banking, Lewis seems to tutor the reader even as he's learning some of the basics himself. He explains how the bond market drama of the eighties began with the adoption of a new operating system by the fed, targeting money supply growth instead of interest rates. This caused bond prices to swing wildly and created a window of opportunity for traders in the heretofore backwater bond market to reap huge sums in arbitrage. At the same time, consumer and government debt skyrocketed, creating a enormous demand for fixed income products.

Many of the big shots, "or "Big Swinging...", as Lewis often
refers to them, happened to be in the right place at the right time. Luck definitely played a large part in making many of them legends. As for Lewis himself, he emerges as one of the luckiest of all, escaping with a rich experience, the material for a terrific book, and maybe even his soul.

The stories of Wall St excesses are well told and most readers will find very captivating. "True Greed" is a very fitting byline. Useful also for understanding financial markets. I thought the book got way too technical though, and tried to become a history of the bond markets in the 80's. I wanted to know more about the traders themselves, what did they do with the enormous sums of money they made, what was life outside the office like? We are not told anything about how long the working day is, what their friends thought of them, where they lived etc.

Lewis spins a rollicking tale around the formative years of a niche in the bond market which still exists today. Aside from simply teaching the lay person a very basic lesson in finance, Lewis gives us glimpse onto the trading floor that we may or may not want to see. Investors will shudder and those ambitious souls with iron stomachs (you'll have to read the book)will pack their bags for the city to become traders.

I originally read this book because of its relevance to my job in the asset-backed bond industry. For those just starting out in the business, it is a must read.

For anyone else who enjoys a well-written yet hilarious trip to The Street, I highly recommend Liar's Poker.

Not a card game at all but a game of bluff and sizing up your opponent. It is very appropriate that the book starts off with the example of John Gutfreund (CEO of Salomon) trying to engage his chief bond trader in a single round of Liars Poker for 1 million dollars, because it is symptomatic of the egos of the players, the money that was being made and the excesses that characterised what is now generally called the greed decade.

Lewis's perspective is that of an insider as he was a bond trader for Salomon Brothers in their New York and London offices. It's generally a very funny story with some hilarious descriptions of some of the characters and their behavior. Hilarious that is, until you realise that damage was being done to lives, companies and industries. As the author so succintly put it "the range of acceptable conduct...was wide indeed.It said something about the ability of the free marketplace to mold people's behavior into a socially acceptable pattern...this was capitalism at its most raw, and it was self-destructive." That this was true he goes on to illustrate with stories about trades gone bad, deals losing millions, and people skewered for things they had no knowledge of. I guess you could say that this was Darwinian Capitalism, these people had evolved into predators and were at the top of the food chain. Lewis himself says as much "the place was governed by the simple understanding that the unbridled pursuit of perceived self-interest was healthy. Eat or be eaten." It is no coincidence that one of his colleagues was called the Human Piranha!. Naturally, behaviour like this will lead to a messy ending and so it is, with the story culminating with a description of the Stock Market crash of '87 and Salomon itself in trouble.

I read this book at about the same time as 'Den of Thieves' and would recommend both (that is, if you are interested in a historical view of Wall Street; remember these events took place 10-15 years ago). Liars Poker is good for the witty personal perspective Lewis brings, the other book gives a broader view of Wall Street and an investigative journalistic perspective of the insider trading scandal involving Michael Milken et al.

Coming from an "insider" this tells the story about the inner workings of the finance company rather beautifully. The situations created are hilarious and the author is certainly witty at times - which overall makes it a nice, light book to read. Some of the chracters created are very interesting and funny. However, I have two gripes. One, the author is unable to hide his dislike for his company's CEO and it comes out from the book that he is less than fair to him. Two, the book gets a little technical at times going into, for example, the details of how a mortgage bond work and why is better (or not) vis a vis a junk bond. Coming from a bond salesman they are not rather expected but they do take away the basic flow of the book. Overall a funny book with average grades.

This is the book so many others have tried to imitate, Michael Lewis's classic account of his time as a bond salesman. Like many of his imitators, Lewis has a seemingly endless supply of funny stories about his time at Salomon's bond desk during its glory days. Unlike others, however, Lewis is also tremendously insightful about what the real meaning of his job was, and what such a culture implied for the state of the American economy and culture.

What the heck do all those Wall Street insiders know that we normal people don't? Nothing. And author Michael Lewis tells us the behind the scenes stories that illustrate this very point. He focuses on his time spent a Salomon Brothers in the 1980's. He tells a tale with humorous bent and really gets you feeling the tenseness that pervaded the office. Not only a quick and interesting read, but an insightful one too.

Do you want a great laugh? Well I had one with this book. Normally it takes a while to warm me up, but Lewis did the job in 10 pages. The book gives a good impression about 'the big swinging ...', but watch out. Don't start reading, if you don't have the time to finish it the same day. The book kept me out of the pool for a hole day on my vacation, so, for all you big swingers, have fun and buy the book...(I read the book 2 years ago, but it's still in my head! )

I am an investment banker on Wall Street and found the book quite funny and pointed. However, it will probably be less enjoyable for those not on Wall Street. There are a lot of "in-jokes" which might be hilarious to M&A analysts like myself, but pointless to others.

If you want to believe all the myths you've heard about Wall Street, read this book. If you want to really learn about what sales and trades is like on the Street, read a more factual book, like "FIASCO." I felt that Lewis did a lot of embellishing so he could sell more books.

I have to agree with the older gentlemen above. I am 28 years old and have pretty worthless IRA's and savings plans that I am trying to grow at a better rate. Before buying a book I like to read the good and bad reviews, and like most of the 1 star reviewers, I can't believe anyone gave this book 5 stars. I suppose from an investment point of view I would encourage the ignorant to waste their money chasing fast easy money, but for those who actually know or want to know more about investing and the workings of Wall Street, do yourself a favor and pass over this book. I don't know the average age of the readers of this book, but I am guessing that I must be older than most of them because even I can't help thinking this is a hollywood rendition of a "real life" experience.

Very well written. Fast moving. M. Lewis brings Wall Street to you in understandable terms. Exposes the financial hype for what it is. If you like finance, you will enjoy it; if you like learning about human nature, you will also like. If you enjoy both, you will love this book.

This was one of the first Wall Street expose books and Lewis names names and exposes dirty linen. He didn't last long at Wall Street or in London but he managed to look around and see the foibles of the trader, salesmen and others. It is quite entertaining and a quick read but it certainly gives a look at the around for the crash that followed not to long after he was there. Anyone wanting to understand the crash should read this book before some of the others that have delved deeply into the troubles. Highly recommended as a background look at what happened.

I was impressed about how fast this item was shipped to and actually received in Peru.

The testament to this book's greatness (and it's most ironic quality) is that traders for the past 25 years have likened themselves to the guys portrayed in this book.

Instead of re-hashing why this book is awesome, I'd emphasize here that it's a great book for the economic layman to read today because it recounts the creation of the collateralized securities market in an entertaining and accurate way. If you want to know the origins of the current economic debacle (and why Lou Ranieri is oft mentioned as a culprit), this book is an ideal choice.

When it was written people thought it was devastatingly funny. In December 2009 it is not funny. If you want to understand how Wall Street has driven the world over the edge read this book. The history of mortgaged backed securities is here is here is a nut shell. The greed that runs Wall Street is here along with the mind set that drives it. I suggest you read this book as background before you get the next part in March 2010- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.


The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Liar's Poker is a great story about the inside, behind-the-scenes culture of Wall Street. Couldn't put this down as "page turner" is an understatement. Learned a little about trading and a lot about the pervasive culture that exists in the financial circles on Wall Street. Not a surprise that the folks there have their priorities focused directly on WIFM (What's in It For Me) in terms of their own financial progress. And no surprise that they learn this from the "top down". Even though it's a bit of a rhetorical "duh?" conclusion, the story IS STILL FASCINATING.

This book is your primer to what happened to the US economy long after it was penned.

As a financier who worked amongst all of the moving parts herein defined, I can spell it out to you in simple terms: If loan becomes more valuable than its collateral, it's worthless.

Liar's Poker is now a period piece which unintentionally disected the groundwork for the disasterous bogus inflation of mortgage values, which pushed up home values, in the buildup to the 2008 crash.

The author seems to have been intent on just getting inside as an employee long enough to write the book, but he did manage to pull off more of an expose than I believe even he himself thought at the time.

The history of the notorious invention of "traunching" mortgage risk, by Solomon Bros in the 1980's, was later unleashed to its full capacity for destruction by the elimnation of related regulation and anit-monopoly rules in the 2000's. In hindsight, it's rediculously obvious.

On a dive boat with one of the employees of the the primary character in 1998, he told me they were 'knocking it out of the park' by making mortgages to 125% of value. That's when I got out of that business.

A great read, written with great humor, this book is an educational classic I recommend all the time.

Paid for a newer edition, recieved the older one. Could have ordered the older edition for less from someone else.

This book helped me to actually understand wall street better than any experience in the past. (And that's saying a lot since I used to work for a firm which audited some of those firms, have had many friends on WS, etc.). Notice I didn't say this book helped me to understand stocks, bonds, markets, or investing though - just wall street and it's culture.

From the outlandish behavior, over the top pranks, abuse of newcomers, and obsession with money, Michael Lewis describes the culture of Wall Street in a way that will feel oddly familiar because you understand the archetype, even if you've never been there.

One of the best parts of the book is the history it gives. Lewis described the creation of thinks like mortgage backed securities and America's infatuation with junk bonds. He chronicles how the market crashes in the 80s affected Salomon brothers, and the forces that led to it. What he couldn't have known at the time of course was the havoc that mortgage backed securities would lead to decades later, but he explains how they came to exist, sets the stage, and leaves you with a better appreciation for the origins of our current economic troubles. Even though this book doesn't talk directly about our current economic problems (because it was published in 1989), it gives a better understanding of the root causes (the culture, the incentives, the short term thinking, etc.) than many other books I've read. It also has the advantage of not suffering from revisionism due to hindsight - for example many of the benefits of mortgage backed securities are mentioned. In my opinion, this is a much fairer and better look at wall street than almost anything else I've seen.

Liar's Poker is a bluffing game played by the stock and bond traders at Salomon Brothers. There is series of arbitrary numbers -- the serial numbers on dollar bills -- that the associates make bids on. No one has any idea what the other players are holding, so the actual numbers are less important than the traders' abilities to bluff each other. The game is how they learn and practice putting one over on each other.

The game is also the title and central metaphor for Michael Lewis' 1989 memoir about becoming a bond trader at Salomon Brothers. His book pops up on a lot of best-of-business writing lists. It may seem odd to be reading it twenty years on, but if you really want to understand how the seeds of our current economic crisis were sown, you should read it.

Salomon Brothers basically invented the "mortgage backed security" that are one of the major causes of our economic problems.

What is revealing and relevant about Lewis' book is the dissection of the structure of the brokerage house and the attitudes that dominate it. The company, trader, and salesman's best interest are often at odds with those of their customers. The basic principle of trading is this: bluff the customer into placing big bets on stocks and bonds and take a commission on the sale. If the bet "blows up" the customer, well, "Hey, it's the market. It is unpredictable. Who knew?" (But the company and trader got their piece of the action.) If the bet produces a big return for the customer, then the customer has more money to use to make bigger bets with the now "proven" financial adviser.

In the lexicon of Salomon Brothers, "blowing up a customer" is when the customer loses their entire investment. It is commonly known in the industry that associates fresh from the training program will "blow up" most of their customers for about six months. Salomon Brothers only allows these green traders or "geeks" access to small investors to prevent damage to their big institutional investors, the organizations that will make bets in the tens of millions to billion of dollars.

The working class and middle class salary men who have bought into the common wisdom that the market always goes up over time and will beat inflation get fed to the "geeks" who are the most likely to blow them up. The trader/salesman gets his percentage. The company books the business. The investor takes all the risk and loss.

Lewis' own description of the practice: "In need of a euphemism for what we did with other people's money, we called it arbitrage, which was just plain obfuscation. Arbitrage means 'trading risklessly for profit.' Our investors always took risk; high-wire act would have been more accurate than arbitrage. In spite of the responsibility implied by my job, I was ignorant and malleable when I advised my first customers. I was an amateur pharmacologist, prescribing drugs without a license. The people who suffered as a result were, of course, my customers."

Lewis extends the metaphor. The brokerage house is basically a casino. The traders and salesmen are dealers. The markets, like the odds of winning a game of chance, are vaguely knowable, but entirely unpredictable. The investors are gamblers.

The difference, though, between Vegas and Wall Street is that people who go to Vegas know that they are gambling. People who take their money to Wall Street have been told that they are investing.

Lewis, to his credit, quits his job.

If you find yourself a little flummoxed by all of the financial reporting about our current economic meltdown, read Liar's Poker. It will help you make sense of it all.

Liar's Poker goes down in history as the first-ever "high financial thriller" of the non-fiction variety. The first fiction thrillers were Zero Coupon (1993) by Paul Erdman and my own Lost Trust: The Great Credit Crisis (see 25-Feb-09 PR: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/book-lost-trust-author-lang-gibson-4662.html). When just a kid in college, I remember my godfather giving Liar's Poker to me for Christmas, and it was the book that first got me excited to work in the institutional bond side of the business (1990-2008). Despite Michael's brilliant marketing abilities and warnings about Wall Street greed (as well as my own efforts to warn the relevant parties about subprime CDOs), we are now sadly witnessing the quick evaporation of Lewis's bond business (along with the economy). Some forces are too powerful to override.

While Liar's Poker does not explain brilliant things about Wall Street that you cannot learn from reading the news, it teaches the material in a far friendlier fashion. Lewis is able to translate his fantastic sense of humor onto paper better than most (why he was a good salesman for his short stint at Solly). As for the relevance of the book's material to the present day, there is a huge difference that many customer reviewers are missing. Lewis wrote about the creation of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which slice and dice interest-rate-sensitive prepayment-risk. By contrast, subprime ABS tranche out credit risk, a far less forecastable and riskier event, especially with no economic data on national home price declines. Even more, the subprime ABS were packaged into my product, subprime ABS CDOs. That extra leverage from the extra layer of securitization (and the higher risk from subprime defaults vis-a-vis prepayment risk) was the medicine it took - along with absent regulation, where the Govt feigned the opposite - to blow it all up.

Liar's Poker is a game involving deceit, skill, and luck. "Liar's Poker," the book, is a much more interesting topic. Lewis was a Soloman Brothers bond salesman working mostly in London. The book's intent is to describe and explain events and attitudes of the 1986-era.

Wall Street was the "in thing" in the mid-1980s. Forty-percent of Yale's 1986 graduating class (1,300) applied to just a single bank - First Boston. Lewis graduated a few years earlier from Princeton (art history) and had just finished graduate studies at the London School of Economics when he was selected out of 6,000 applicants for one of 127 trainee positions at $48,000; fellow classmates included ten Harvard MBAs, 70 other MBAs, and 15 PhDs. Lewis' account of his training offers no lessons.

Soloman had a near monopoly on bond trading at the time, and by 1980 the mortgage market exceeded the U.S stock market. Soloman's mortgage bond trading made more in 1985 than the rest of Wall Street. The resulting giddy profits allowed employees to get away with incredible rowdy, boorish behavior.

An early major problem with mortgage bond trading was pension funds and foreign buyers' reluctance to get involved with instruments that could be paid off at any time. CMOs and tranches, introduced in 1983, resolved this problem - allowing buyers to select both the maturity period and risk desired. Eg. a first tranche contained maturities of 5 or less years, 2nd 7-15 years, 3rd 15-30 years.

After training, Lewis was sent to London and assigned to cold calling. Some Soloman traders would take advantage of customers and unload dogs that the firm was holding and couldn't get rid of; sometimes this bankrupted the customer or got the individual buyer fired. Lewis quickly learned better approaches - arbitrage, contrarian thinking, and exploiting secondary impacts (eg. buy oil after Chernobyl).

Another ethics problem Lewis encountered was a manager that claimed credit for one of Lewis' innovative sales. The "good news" was learning how Lewis cleverly obtained revenge.

Expense accounts for Lewis and his associates were unbelievable - $400/night for a hotel (almost 20-years later I was limited to $50). Lewis himself earned $90,000 his second year - half bonus.

Eventually Soloman's low ethics, free-spending, high charges, and the hundreds of alternative firms almost led to the London unit's demise. (The market was much more of an oligarchy in the U.S.) Regardless, the firm's bad decisions (eg. temporarily getting out of mortgages) and penny-pinching bonuses led to a serious brain drain.

The most interesting portion of the book is Lewis' knowledge of Michael Milken. Milken saw bonds from blue-chip companies as risky - little upside, lots of downside. (This was the era when American manufacturing was collapsing.) Small new companies and large old companies with problems could not persuade risk-averse commercial bankers and money managers to lend to them. Milken, however, analyzed the data and realized these risk premiums were excessive.

Soloman tried to get into the junk bond market, but was undercut by a top managers of its resuscitated mortgage bond unit who followed the junk-bond presenters around and undermined them. (Lack of top leadership?) The number of new junk bonds rose from nearly 0 in the 1970s to $839 million in 1981, and $12 billion in 1987 - 25% of the corporate bond market. The market further expanded by using junk bonds to finance raids on undervalued corporations, then for LBOs and M&A. Drexel Burnham (Milken's firm) netter fees of $100+ million for single takeovers. Soloman, however, misses out.

Lewis left, and shortly afterwards Buffett rescued the firm via a $700 million convertible preferred investment. A 1991 scandal involving government bonds led to Buffett taking over as CEO for ten months, and in 1997 the firm was sold to Citigroup.

Michael Lewis details his short career on Wall Street working with Salmon Brokers as a trader (working both in the US and Europe). Lewis provides a description of the rise and fall of the mortgage bond market at Salomon Brothers as well his experience with other derivative markets. Included in the book are several outlandish incidents that went on behind the scenes at Salomon brothers. Many of the undertakings by the high net worth investment professionals will leave you taken aback as their actions show an often significant lack of any real viable market knowledge.

Beyond some revelations revealing the sophomoric attitudes of the investment professionals and a peripheral description of the financial markets, Liar's Poker offers little insight that one would not acquire by working as a temp at any major brokerage firm. Expecting to find a perceptive analysis on the financial markets, I was disappointed only to find a marginal account of the industry and some commentary on the author's personal experiences. Lewis is not a bad writer, as he proved to be witty at times, but the material becomes monotonous rather quickly.

First half = interesting. Second half = kinda boring. Lewis has inspired me to write a better insider's account of Wall Street.

This book was so inspirational and superb it may have changed my life. It changed my perspective on things and it was so funny and enlightening it in a way contributed to helping me go from a Junior Manager in a Fortune 500 company to Head of Division with responsibility over 15 countries in an International Fortune 500 Company...a must read for any MBA or graduate diving into the corporate rat race and wanting to know - is anything possible? the answer is yes. Depends how you do it...A great read. Thanks!

Michael Lewis describes his corner of wall street pretty well. The 1980s bond market. He continually contrasts the practice and culture of trading bonds with the dogma of Economics.

Over the course of the book it becomes easy to draw parallels between Wall Street and Feudal Europe. The Economists are like the Catholic Church in Feudal Europe. The Traders are like the Nobles and Royalty in Medieval Europe. The Job of the Nobles is to fight other Nobles over the right to control land, rent, and protection fees. The Job of the Church is to teach people who aren't Nobles that they should do what the Nobles tell them to. In exchange, the Church will occasionally ask the Nobles to behave a little better.

this book is a must read if you are getting into the financial industry along with "when genius failed" and others.

OUTSTANDING!! This is the single best book I've ever read for learning the basics of life in a Wall St. investment bank. Very accessible and humorous, yet informative as well.

I read this book again for the fifth or sixth time. It continues to be a great read. I highly recommend it for anyone in finance. Thoroughly accessible and thoroughly enjoyable.

It is a lot fun to read this book. We can find some roots of today's subprime crisis in the wild 1980's as told by Michael Lewis.

Excellent book. Easy reading. One more proof that we never learn from past mistakes. Perhaps subprime mortgage lenders have not red this thing. Or perhaps they did it very seriously. Find out for yourself. It is a good investment of your time and money. After this book, continue with "Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco ". Have fun!

A very well written account of a young bond trader and his firm, Salmon Brothers. I literally could not put the book down once I started reading it. One point to reflect upon from the book is the story of Ranieri, the man who conceived and sold the idea of mortgage backed securities, now the source of grave anxiety and concern in the financial market as of December, 2007.

Michael Lewis is an excellent author. In Liar's Poker, he describes his life at Salomon Brothers in the 1980's as a bond salesman. It is not a mere biography which is why this book deserves my 5 star rating. Lewis does an outstanding job in 3 different areas:

First, he manages to make his story funny and entertaining. Sure, he may have exagerrated in some parts and selctively wrote about the more entertaining characters at Salomon, but that does not take away from the story of investment banking in those days.

Second, he gives the reader an honest and fair story of young investment bankers. He not only tells us his story but also dabbles in the stories of some of his classmates. Any young business school or college graduate interested in investment banking would benefit greatly from his book.

Third, he researched other areas of investment banking - not just the area where he was assigned. He has a big section on mortgage bonds which is extremely relevant to today's markets given the downturn in the housing market and subprime mortgage problems. Also discusses junk bonds and equities. It may sound dull in my review, but the way he writes about them is a lot more interesting which is why he is a bestseller author and I am merely an Amazon reviewer.

I highly recommend Liar's Poker to those interested in investment banking, Wall Street or investing in general. If you enjoyed Liar's Poker, then consider Stewart's Den of Thieves.

I bought Liar's Poker thinking that it will teach me the game of the same name, but instead it taught me a lot about the bond markets and traders in general. It makes me want to be a trader. Very interesting read and definitely teaches you something about how bond and mortgage markets work. If you are looking to learn Liar's Poker as a game, then this is not the book for it though, except for learning how to bluff like in the game. You can learn how to bluff by bluffing and not by reading books anyway.

Hey Queen nice dogs you have there
Price of oit $12/barrel
Those who say don't know, and those who know don't say
The end of fixed stock brokerage commissions had come on May 1, 1975.
3 bond groups: government, corporate and mortgages
TED; difference between the LIBOR and interest rate on a 3-month treasury bill
John Gutfreund, appointed chairman by William Salomon, son of one of the firm's 3 founding fathers.
Lewis Raniere, utility bond trader to Mortgae king 1979
Paul Volcker October 6,1979 speech short term interest sky rockets
Meum dictum pactum: My word is my bond
Predator's ball - Trace the rise of Drexel's junk bond department
Corporate Raiders: Ronald Perelman, Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, Irwin Jacobs, Sir James Goldsmith, Nelson Peltz, Samuel Heyman, Saul Steinberg and Asher Edelman.

The book is clearly satire, and definitely exaggerates a bit, but it still gives you a sense of the Wall Street culture, where people are extremely wealthy but also extremely unrefined (scarfing greasy cheeseburgers while making millions). Very funny. Also extremely informative on topics such as the rise of mortgage bonds and junk bonds as financial tools. The book gives a great portrayal of the genius of the people behind these financial innovations. In fact, its portrayal of people in general is very funny and memorable. One final upside: there are some books, where, if you don't read them for about a week, you have no clue what's going on anymore. This is not one of those. There are relatively few people to keep track of, and they are described so well that you can't forget them.

I would DEFINITELY recommend this book. Funny and informative, a window onto a strange culture known as Wall Street.

Michael Lewis' inside look at the heady days of Salomon Brothers during the 1980s and the decay that followed is a mildly amusing, albeit disjointed narrative with little new information. It is funny in parts and some of the character sketches make you pause but overall a strictly average book.

Great book, so funny, makes me want to rush to Wall Street and become a trader!

I bought this in 1997 and only recently found the time to read it and am I glad I read it!

The narration is incredibly funny and often I found myself chuckling out loud. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this, Kudos Michael!

Michael Lewis has yet again proved what a great writer he is with his lucid style of elucidation. In this book, Lewis talks about the raging 80s -as far as bond trading is concerned- and the events at Solomon Brothers during that period of euphoria. Lewis gives us a glimpse of the street- the exuberance, the egoistic, and the bizzare among the various cadres of the bond value chain, as he walks us thru his memoir of 4 odd years at Solomon. The depiction of each of the extreme characters are just great.

This book is both entertaining and informative of the situations facing many of the people at trading desks on the Street and in the City. While things have changed since Michael Lewis's time, much has stayed the same. The money, intelligence, ego, and drive of many market participants twenty years ago are still a requirement for success in the IB world today.

Liar's Poker is to future investment bankers as Scott Turow's One L is to future law students. Not only is this book informative, it's entertaining and filled with a vast array of characters. Lewis has the gift or storytelling. Not only does the book cover the process by which the author got the job offer at Salomon Brothers coming out of the London School of Economics and the fearful weeks of the Training Program in New York, he aptly tells the story of the firm and its rise and fall, from the beginning of mortgage-backed securities and the millions made by MBS traders to the crash of October 1987. This is an excellent book that my generation can learn from. And while the ability to communicate and trading technology has become faster, from what I can tell, many of the personalities within the i-banking world described in this book have not. This is an exciting book that will keep you reading. Know what happened twenty years ago and you firm will not likely send you to trade equities in Dallas.

I read this book when it first came out. It was fascinating--providing a compelling insight into the way a real financial institution that got more respect than it deserved placed profit above ethics. Shocking and hilarious at the same time.

Engrossing at the outset then runs out of steam. I had to put it down.

The book gave me insight to the world of the Investment Banker. It is funny and very interesting. It made me realize Enron is not an isolated case.

Definitely worth reading, not a waste of your time. Of course, you must have some interest for I-banking drama and bonds.

My son who is halfway through a business degree said to me the other day that he might get into the merchant banking scene when he graduates. I remebered this book as being the entertaining tell all about Wall St et al. and bought it for him.
He can't put it down and is enthralled.
If you ever need to know how it happens and the "charaters" that make up the scene - this is the book.

This book is a must for people interested in Wall St dealers. It's entertaining, but does not discuss anything in depth in terms of trading strategies. It's the story of John Merriweather, Lewis Ranieri and their crew...It gives a detailed account of who the top traders were at Soloman and where they ended up. The book is very good with describing the specific of individuals responsible for making Salomon the bond house of the 80s and 90s. This book describes how the mortgage market was invented by Lewis Ranieri who started out his career in the mail room

This is one of the finest books I've read in a while. The book kept me up many nights, knowing I'd regret it the next day, but unable to put it down. For a detailed, first-hand, insightful look at the madness and excitement at Wall Street's top bond trading firm in the 80s, this is the book to read. Even if you have only a tangential interest in the financial world, Liar's Poker will be worth your time. I read Monkey Business before this, and thought that highly entertaining. It pales in comparison to Liar's Poker, however. Highly recommended..it fully deserves its status as a classic.

This one is a business school must read. You should be able to talk about the game, know about the book, and carry on an intelligent conversation. On the other hand, you won't read it more than once. Fairly easy read.

read this book, you'll know if wall street is for you. there hasn't been a better book since.

This is a superb ,blow by blow, in the trenches,account of how the capital markets of the USA are organized and function on a day to day basis.In chapter 12 of the General Theory(GT},Keynes correctly categorized the financial markets as a game of Old Maid or Musical Chairs,where the goal is "...foreseeing changes in the conventional basis of valuation a short time ahead of the general public"(Keynes,1936,p.154).Wall Street speculators" are concerned,not with what an investment is really worth to a man who buys it "for keeps",but with what the market will value it at,under the influence of mass psychology,three months or a year hence"(Keynes would have said three minutes or three hours if he were writing the GT today)(Keynes,pp.154-155).The capital,financial and stock markets are not organized to maximize long run net present value,but very short run net present value.The markets are essentially based on a short run ,short sighted,pennywise poundfoolish approach that does not maximize long run economic growth and welfare.Keynes's views were the direct result of his extensive hands on experience in operating in such markets himself over a forty year period.The potential bookbuyer is urged to read this book simultaneously with chapter 12 of the GT.

Michael Lewis is obviously an excellent writer. The words simply flow from him. He speaks from experience so his perspective is insightful, and entertaining.

I have always been mesmerized by wallstreet, as well as silicon valley, simply because we it allows us, if even for just a few hours, to imagine the possibility of attaining great wealth legitimately thru our talent and hard work.

He reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut. But Kurt speaks of the old wrld, the one our fathers lived in. Lewis in more today. Somewhat ike Po Bronson

I am a novice at financial markets. I picked up this book "just because it was there" (mountaineers will understand the pun!). I loved every page of it. The author's sense of humor and writing style is very impressive. What's more, for a finance novice, it is an education on bonds with a good mix of historical perspective. I found, at times, the author's low opinion of himself, a bit strange. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in a candid account of the upheavals, tricks and treacheries of the financial market.

An insider's look at the inside of an investor banking firm, with no holds barred. I enjoyed the descriptions of the characters particulary The Human Piranha, who sounds like Joe Pesci, Alexander the boy wonder trader, and Lou Ranieri who rose from the mailroom to the head of mortgage trading. Well written and great use of humor!

Michael Lewis's ten-year-old account of his two-year stint as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers has become a literary classic in the world of finance, and has probably stroked aspirations in more Wall Street-bound MBAs than any other book. I know many an individual who, after reading the book, become so enamored with the culture described therein that they take it upon themselves to act like the "human piranha" or any of the other clownish characters from the book.

Having worked on Wall Street in various client-facing capacities over the years, especially as a trader with a volatile fund, I feel the book is a bit over melodramatic and over-sensational. Are there such personas on Wall Street? Absolutley. In fact the real people on Wall Street -- the traders, the whiteshoe i-bankers, the jewish deal-makers and deal-breakers -- can be even meaner, nastier than Lewis describes. But the clownish characters he creates are probably more fiction than real. Still, his observation that most traders have huge egos and are among the most despicable human beings (despite their MBAs, Ph.D.s, or MDs) to ever walk on earth, is deadly accurate. The constant politicking is captured vividly by the author, although, again, his writing seems to border on fiction quite often.

Don't take me wrong; I think this is a must-read for anyone interested in how Wall Street breathes and works. Lewis does a fine job at exposing the disgusting nature of greed, the only thing that feeds Wall Street's daily existence.

First, this book is a biography of a chapter in Michael Lewis' life. It is NOT a book about increasing your personal wealth or about Wall Street high finance.

That being said, this book is wonderfully well written, full of surprises, and the reference to the game of Liar's Poker carries well as a vehicle throughout the book. It was scary and comical to see what brokers and traders are actually doing with my money once I hand it over to them.

I am glad that Michael Lewis survived his time on in the stock market and lived to tell us all about it. I will undoubtedly reread this book some time.

This book is hilarious. You don't need to have a Wall Street or business background to enjoy it. Think of the movie "Wall Street" if it had been a comedy instead of a drama. Michael Lewis relates his personal experiences with wicked humor mixed with thoughtful insight.

As a business school student, I cannot thank the author enough for introducing almost everything on Investment banking and financial maket in the rawest depiction. The book is not only educational to any investors in any form..., but deliciously entertaining. MUST READ!

I have a hard time deciding 4 or 5 stars for this book. Lewis paints an enjoyable and informative picture of Wall Street and the London branch of Salomon Brothers, but takes a long hiatus in the middle chapters, delving into more history and neglecting his own experiences entirely. It's the (more) boring middle chapters that rehash Wall Street's history and cause a reader to lose interest.

Lewis is at times funny, but this book is FICTION and loses some of its power when the author chooses pseudonyms or oblique references for real people in real situations. All in all, a good, easy read -- but don't expect a Salomon learning experience.

I have worked on Wall Street since the beginning of the 90's and have met many of the actual characters in the book (with the exception of the author who was long gone by the time I turned up). So I know who Dash Riprock, Herman the German and others are in real life as well as what they are doing now (or at least until recently). This book is now something of an anachronism - a testament to a different age when banks were places where real risk-taking happened. The atmosphere on "the street" by comparison today is very antiseptic with the quants (geeks in the book) having a larger role and everyone panders to customers.

Having spoken to a number of the protagonists of the book the big question is how true are these stories? My impression is that Mr Lewis uses a liberal amount of literary license but without foresaking the feeling of the time and the place. Notwithstanding the book's age, I encourage everyone who is thinking of working in the global financial markets arena (especially fixed income and fx) to read this book and reflect on a different time when the pizzas were stacked high on fridays and not sushi boxes...

Postscript - Ironically, one of the principal background players in the book - John Meriwether; became perhaps even more famous long after this book (with LTCM blowing up in 1998) as being the only individual person (fund) who has directly provoked the Federal Reserve to adjust monetary policy (interest rates) downward, and surely 1 of the few people in the world to have lost more than a billion dollars of investors money in the market. Unlike Liar's Poker the partners at LTCM didn't all follow the "no tears" rule (by complaining about market conspiracies (!) etc.) when they lost the money.

The impression I gained from Liars Poker is that the book is almost a series of short stories, linked together by people or events. The writing style is very witty. But make no mistake, though this book is entertaining, it is not light. I learned plenty about the trading rooms, and such debt instruments as mortgage bonds that the heroes of this book traded.

It also is a bit frightening- America has (or used to have) an image of financial people as rational beings- this book exposes them as living, breathing, emotional people who have an equal capacity to hit the lottery or go bust. Truly frightening considering the percentage of the world's capital that trades through "the Street" daily.

This is not just a great book about the financial services industry, this is a good book PERIOD, and can be enjoyed by anyone who has some intelligence.

LIAR'S POKER is a good read. This book offers a clever, even funny, first-hand analysis of what wrong with American business during the end of the 1980's. Author Michael Lewis provides a fascinating explanation, from an insider's point of view, of how those involved in the highest levels of the financial community made their obscene amounts of money--and how they destroyed the nation's economy in the process. His report is revelatory indeed. Anybody with an interest in the history of American business, or a curiosity about the high life in New York during an overheated decade, will find that LIAR'S POKER offers a great amount of detail.

Speaking as a Los Angeles Economics student I found the book to be a highly entertaining, refreshingly interesting, delightful tour through the day-to-day activities of what was at one point the world's premier investment firm. Mr. Lewis provides a fascinating insider's look at the bond markets and the leveraged buyouts that made the period famous. Highly recommended for anyone tired of stultifying economics textbooks.

Michael Lewis was still a bond salesman at Solomon Brothers when he began writing Liar's Poker, and it is obvious that he was right in the middle of the action this book discusses. The book is set in the frenzied 1980's when bond traders were raking in millions of dollars a year and were at the top of the investment banking-heap. It is a wild world where unbelieveably confident, ambitious, and greedy men put their all (their money, time, and energy--all of which they have in large reserves)into making more money than anyone else in their firm and any other firm on Wall Street. Lewis is always funny and a very careful observer of the world which he describes, so this is a wonderful insider's perspective of a fascinating career. It really makes investment banking come alive, does a wonderful job explaining complicated financial matter, and though it is non-fiction all of the outlandish characters make it a very entertaining read. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in finance or who just want to read a very well written, fun book about "the real world."

This is one of those excellent books that you should read for the following reasons:

1. Everyone else has read it, so they will sprinkle their narratives with examples from it.

2. Is funny, wonderfully engrossing biography of Lewis's life at the company Solman Brothers.

3. You'll slice thru this book like a stick of warm butter. Just one of those books that you read in one or two sittings.

Gutfreund's meeting with Merriwether at the beginning of this book is one of the greatest vignette's in financial history and sums up everything that is right and wrong with this industry.

This book is required reading for anyone working in and around this industry. It helps that Lewis is a funny, witty writer with an unforgiving eye.

This is the true story of a former Salomon Bros. bond saleman during the free wheeling mid 80's when they ruled the roost until their abrupt collapse.

Much of the book is both hilarious and cautionary--and often for the same reason. The excesses of the cut throat and weird culture at Salomon and their "screw the customer" mantra (and action) if it conflicted with Salomon's perceived interests yield a not often seen inside view of the goings on. I should also point out here that the customers were wealthy individuals and institutions. A customer with 20 million dollars to deal with (in the mid-80's) was small potatoes. In fact, they were the ones that Salomon let loose their fledging traders on (this was a learn on the job job), since it wasn't considered of very great import if they "blew them up", i.e., caused them to lose most of their money.

Any business book that's actually readable stands out. And this one more than most. It's not only readable but quite cynically humorous. Since many of the reviews describe the very positive qualities of the book, let me mention some of its deficiencies, as I saw them.

First, the author underplays his abilities. While directly depicting himself as not very good at his career, in fact it's quite clear he was an excellent salesman. This isn't so important in itself, but it is represents a tone in the book that to me indicates that the author was more into it and the Salomon culture than he writes and from which he tries to ethically distance himself.

Additionally, most of the individuals (and the corporate culture) were so extreme that I would have liked to know what they were like and the lives they led away from work. One thing I would definitely be curious about is to what extent their cut throat and sleazy work behavior carried over into their personal lives. Were they solid pillars of the community (many of them were more than wealthy) or were they as much sleaze bags off the camera as well as on. Or, since it would probably be a mixed bag, how did they divide in general along these lines.

This is one respect in which I think Tracy Kidder's _Soul of a New Machine_ is better, in addtion to Kidder's more natural language flow.

But, I don't mean to appear negative. I really enjoyed the read, again finding it both amusing and cautionary.

While reading it I remembered what a friend of mine who married wealth ("I married her only for her money," he confessed to me as she stood beside him) and then increased it. I had visited him in the early 80's. "If you ever need a bond salesman call Mr. X. He's completely honest." His wife seriously nodded in agreement.

I, obviously naive, thought this a curuous remark. Why wouldn't he be honest? In general. But also when he depends on your repeat business.

My friend was right, and this book will show you why.

The author did a great job in making this book as funny as possible while still sticking to the core of the book, the rise and fall of Solomon Brothers. (I REALLY fell of the chair laughing a couple of times). Details of various accounts that occuered during the authors employeement at solomon add to the excitment and provide valuable lessons to apply to the real world. This book is a classic and should be in every "wall street addict's" library

Witty and hilarious account about a young bond trader's rise, along the way giving an insider's account of many of the important financial events of its time, such as the Savings and Loan crisis, Michael Milken and the junk bond crisis, and so on. Great history of Salomen Bros. and John Gutfreund's influence. One of the funniest and most readable books about the financial markets ever written.

Lewis, as always, writes extremely well in this book. He spends most of the book explaining the details of bond futures, whole mortgages and other esoteric financial terms, but manages to do it in a way that never bores you. The book is filled with a colorful cast of characters who are entertaining throughout (although they're more down to earth than those in Po Bronson's Baombardiers).

The book looses a star, however, for its somewhat impersonal and inconsitant nature in parts. It starts with an account of Lewis's own start in Salomon Brothers, but then drifts into a narrative about people he heard about, or who worked with his friends, etc. In the last chapters, Lewis struggles to relate the story back to himself. Unfortunately, the ending left me frustrated -- Lewis talks about all the people leaving the firm for various reasons (mostly for more money) and says he'd never leave for money; "I'd leave Salomon Brothers for other reaons, however. And I did." That's more or less the end of the book. A wandering eplilogue closes without telling you any more about his motivations.

Those criticisms apart, Liar's Poker is a great book for anyone who's interested in how Wall Street really works, and especially what happened during the 80s boom.

This is one of the classics on Wall Street trading rooms in the 80s. It is somewhat outdated by now. The book is fairly well written, although Lewis has an annoying habit of always telling you what he is planning on telling you before he actually tells you.

For a newer, fresher book I would suggest Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle. It does for investment banking what Liar's Poker did for trading. Enjoy it!

What an enjoyable book this was. I am so excited when I walk through a bookstore and come across a hidden treasure. The book describes life in a Wall Street investment bank in the 80s. What's so amazing about it is that it's real and all this actually happened somewhere sometime (and probably still does). An added bonus is the education you get on certain aspects of the markets such as fixed-income (bond) trading and how the industry is always looking for new ways to confuse the average joe. If you have some time on your hands, read this book, it can't hurt and it will only take about two days.

I couldn't stop laughing and never wanted to put this book down. It takes you back to the rouring 80's when the junk bond market was getting started. Lewis brings his characters to life! I love this book.

If you are getting into the financial industry, you need to read this book. It's a fun, fast-read but educational and insightful. Enjoy.

Nothing funny about this book..as some reviewers have tried to say. Just have your best friend sell you some garbage paper on Wall Street and when that happens you'll get the drift real soon.....Lewis is brilliant....

And now,

Witness the most recent breakdown in the world economic organization.
Enough to make John Maynard Keynes come back from the dead!

Was it really just because of a bunch of people who couldn't pay back their mortgages? The "sub-prime" crowd?

I think not.

southern jameson west

I found this book to be a great experience in living the life of a bond trader through the gigantic boom of the 80's. It really gave you the sense of what it was like to be there, from typical conversations to real issues, ideas, and even mistakes that arose during the course of a typical stint at a bond traders desk. Lewis pulls you and keeps you there.

I am currently in a fixed income program just as Lewis describes. His insight and description of the attitudes and personalities in I-Banking are dead on and haven't changed a bit in 20 years!

Liar's Poker is a fascinating and fun account of the world of bond trading. Though it gets to be a bit of drag towards the end. The book also explains why most of the investment bankers are shying away from proprietary bond trading these days. Wish somebody would do a similar job on the equities market.

I've been there and done that. But equities not fixed income. Still, many pals on fixed side of Street. Lewis's book is a gem! So honest it hurts... Solly, Drexel, Kidder.... and now just in '99 Merriweather's bail-out again. Most important is that this guy is a wonderful writer: insightful, great style, shocking accuracy. Recommend highly.

As business non-fiction goes, this is just as crisply written and lucid as "Barbarians at the Gate." Makes what would seem boring, rather engrossing.

great book. indispensable to understand the late 80ie

Hilarious book, pretty insightful to the machinations of bond trading and the excess of the'80s. A definite recommendation for avid business readers and all other readers alike. The story however is reads like a tale versus other typical business books

A survival guide, if you will, for all prospective wall street wannabes in college. Michael Lewis is one of the only authors aside from P.J. O'Rourke who can make the inner working of economics and trading seem amusing to the average reader. While all of us have our own view and biases of the crazy trading and greed of the eighties, Mr. Lewis offers an astute and often humorous account of his experiences as a trader of bonds to clients who were as clueless as himself about what they were doing. A must read for all, not just economic gurus. Ben Stein himself couldn't give a more amusing tale of wall street.

Liar's Poker reminded me of Voltaire's Candide and gave me comparable laughs. When a trader tells the young trainee Lewis that he is lower than "whale shit on the ocean floor", he recoils to a corner at the trading room "feeling the warmth of the whale shit". This is one of the funniest books I've read. Cynical, with the perfect timing of comedy, full of insights into the machinery of greed, it portrays Wall Street as the ship of fools. And at the last chapter, if you read between the lines, you will agree that he, too, concludes that the best choice is still to care for you own garden... Read it and enjoy! Believe me, I never lie.

Great bookLiar's Poker. It teaches a lot about the bond market, how the market works, and what bonds are all about. The book talks about market fools, and how the pros in the bond and equity markets make money off the market fools. Until I read this book, I didn't realize that I'm a market fool. This book has changed the way that I look at investing.

This book is an excellent look at the culture of the 1980's investment bank, primarily, the now non-existent, Salomon Brothers. This book takes the reader through the training program at SB with the author Lewis. Liar's Poker does a great job describing the characters in this investment house as well as the insanity that occurs on a daily basis at the trading desks and the woeful decisions by the CEO's of these banks.

The look at SB was hilarious in its time, but now it is an excellent view of the creation of the Mortgage Backed Security and the large market of home loans that was created. This gives the reader a firsthand view of events that would eventually lead to the credit crisis of 2007-2009.

In standard Lewis fashion the reader is given an easy to understand explanation of complicated financial transaction and markets, even the unsophisticated person can read this book and understand the happenings of the markets.

I recommend this book; it is a great way to become familiar with Wall st and its interworkings.

I don't like buying abridged editions, and only did so here because I didn't see an unabridged CD of this book. This one proves why: too short and choppy, and you can tell that much is being left out. In addition, while the stories are interesting, the author's voice is quite incompatible with the material he's reading, and therefore a distraction. (If you want to hear the perfect Audio CD, try the unabridged Angela's Ashes, read by its author Frank McCourt ... pure magic. I'd venture to say you cannot truly understand from any other format what this incredible storyteller is trying to convey. You'll want to start it over as soon as it ends.)

This book had me after the first chapter, which left me with the hair on the back of my neck tingling with excitement. Michael Lewis is a great story teller and since he was on ground zero for Salomon brothers during their early years it gives him a massive amount of insight. This book is hilarious to read because it documents the mortgage trading culture wonderfully during its infancy...and explains how salomon bros sowed the seeds of it's own destruction early on with poor business practices while simultaneously creating the dangerous market of mortgages and derivatives. Excellent to read, complex but in layman's terms, and most importantly it is organized like a good novel: complete with beginning, middle, and end. I highly recommend this book for not only its informational value, but for its entertainment value as well.

Not a bad book about bond trading back in 1980s at Solomon. Couple of funny places that made me laugh. However, in general, it'd probably only be really interesting for those who are into bonds.

Combine, free flowing money, a self-centered culture, and Wall Street's contempt for common moral structures, and you end up with unbridaled greed. From the top down you hear "Take the customer or client for all you can." "The measure of the person is the size of his bonus." This book has helped me truly understand the culture and the liturgy of the New York investment banking world and is a metaphor for what is eroding American society today. It is a wonderful eye opener.

This book was nowhere near as good as all the five star reviews led me to believe. The writer offered some amusing commentaries, but as a whole the book was quite dull. There are no great revelations nor uncommon insights. Instead, Lewis spends half the book descriping events of which he admits he had no firsthand knowledge.
Not a horrible book, but it is very lightweight and doesn't deeply penetrate any of its topics. If you are looking for an amusing, easy-to-read day in the life account of a Wall Street trader, you may enjoy it. Anyone looking for a more hard-hitting account of the era should check out "Predator's Ball" or "Den of Thieves"

Item was received in the exact form as it was mentioned - Smooth transaction - thanks

This is a must read if you want insight into how Wall Street thinks, and you get to learn a little about Mortgage Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligations. Michael Lewis has the unique gift of taking complex subjects and making them understandable and funny.

What is clear from this book, as well as Gasaparino's "The Sellout", is that Derivatives (under Congressional scrutiny right now) and MBS's are not the problem, they are the symptom. Wall Street will simply think of new products to bring in more suckers; that's how the game is played.

Beyond a lesson in Wall Street's antics, this is a fun book to read. Michael Lewis is an entertaining writer, as evidenced by his success as a writer. Highly recommended.

I came through this book saying wow wow wow all along. What a read. For someone who is trying to break into high finance I've been reading books to spur my interest in the field. And Ive read so many. But this has to be right on top of the pile for me. Micheal has a knack of explaining techie finance concepts in such a lucid engaging way.

This book describes Micheal Lewis' ascent through salomon brothers and weaves his story with that of the firms expansionary growth phase till he resigned in 1988.
Every finance junkie should snap this up

If you've been following the events on Wall Street for the past 3 years or so, you'd think you'd heard it all. Well, if you'd purchased Liar's Poker when it was published, you'd have heard it all then. Michael Lewis was there in the waning hours of Salomon Brothers and he captured the psyche of traders and investment firms in this revealing and hilarious expose'. Liar's Poker should be required reading for anyone involved in financial services.

This book is about investment bankers at Salomon Brothers in the 1980's who are portrayed as semi-crooks that were creating and exploiting inefficiencies in the capital markets to enrichen their firm and themselves. I agree this is what a lot of investment bankers do, but ...

The educational and really interesting parts of this book could have been cooked down to 10 pages, max. The rest is filled with tales of office pranks and squabbles, and the author's attempts at poetically describing the atmosphere at an investment bank through colourful descriptions of people and stories that aren't really that interesting. The book is largely fluff. Sorry to be so harsh.

I would instead recommend Fortune's Formula by William Poundstone, which, to me at least, is much more exciting and educational.

I read Michael Lewis's "The Big Short" before I read "Liar's Poker". Both of these books gave me a huge amount of insite into Wall Street and bonds.

I recommend these books to anyone that is politically active and really wants a complete understanding of the 2007 debacle and what caused it!! Believe me, you will not be disappointed!! Better than fiction!!

It is an oldie but it also is a goodie. A very interesting read. I recommend it highly.

I am, to say the least, extremely upset with the way my purchase was handled. By handling I do mean both how my product, a book, was not properly packaged and that said book was lost from the packaging. And secondly, how the loss of my package was not followed up in a timely manner. UPS declared the package "undeliverable" because of poor packaging and the fact that the item inside was missing. No follow up was made by the seller. And no response to my e-mails at all. I am never going to do business with this seller again.

Michael Lewis delivers an engaging read with enough facts thrown in the mix to keep you happy. That's all I have to say. Definitely recommend to people who want somewhere to start when they want to learn about financial crises are made :) It's almost amazing how things stay the same and this book was almost 20 years ago but make a few substitutions and it's pretty much what we have today as well.

The book is both interesting and fun but it is not as informative as I had hoped. I had expected a little more of the mechanics and forensics of the bond market than Mr. Lewis provided, but it is clear that he thought that the reader would find that kind of depth and detail boring or that it would go over the reader's head. Lewis delves into the personalities in an entertaining way, but I bought the book expecting to get a deeper understanding of the physics (or art) of bond generation and trading and what happened and was a little disappointed in that regard.
I intend to also read The Big Short.
I recommend House of Cards. That is a fascinating account of how the credit market unravelled.

I enjoyed the insight on the Street, but mainly the humorous, easy to understand approach.

A decent read about the happenings inside Salomon Brothers during the 1980s. The author's writing style makes the book very readable and is quite comical at times. It covers the birth of Mortgage backed securities and the junk bond market. A good intro into what the training class at Salomon was like back in the day and tales of various practical jokes/pranks that were apparently commonplace.

A good weekend read if you are in the mood.

This book is very entertaining and an easy, enjoyable read. The author shares his personal experiences in a very accessible way, providing a glimpse into the workings and atmosphere of the financial services industry of the 1980's. The author also has a good sense of humor and his descriptions of the some of the characters at Salomon are priceless. Finally, the book is quite well written, which is much appreciated. Highly recommended. Paul Gehrman, Author, Kaleidoscope

This book was written in 1989 by Michael Lewis after two years as a bond trader at Salomon Brothers. The book ranges over a numer of topics: his recruitment and training, Salomon's earlier rise to prominence in bond trading, and in particular its early dominance of mortgage bonds, the author's experience as a Big Swinging Dick in London, the rise of Drexel Burnham and junk bonds, the stock crash of 1987, and the author's subsequent departure from the bank.

Of particular interest today, two decades later, is the description of how Salomon created the first mortgage securities department on Wall Street, with Bob Dall and Lewie Ranieri selling Ginnie Maes. In 1979 a policy change by the Federal Reserve to fluctuate interest rates was accompanied by an explosion of debt and rapid growth in bond markets - and established players such as Salomons. Ironically, at first the mortgage market was hit badly by rising interest rates, but then two years later Congress passed a tax break for savings and loans that incented them en masse to securitize and sell their loans: the resulting flood into the market enabled a handful of Salomon mortgage traders to make $800 million in four years. The traders, however, were not individually compensated in line with their extraordinary profits, allowing them to be poached by Merril Lynch, First Boston, Shearson Lehman, Morgan Stanley, Prudential Bache and Drexel Burnham. The resulting competition reduced the bank's profits, but so also did the spread of collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO) that blended pools of mortgage bonds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, creating instruments that were more predicatable and better priced. CMOs were then tweaked in various ways to sidestep regulation, and in particular to allow thrifts to carry them "off-balance sheet". Eventually Ranieri was promoted away from mortgage securities and pushed out of the bank.

The remainder of the book is more biographical, with numerous anecdotes and comments on the culture at Salomon's that I found entertaining but perhaps not as insightful.

Michael Lewis' story of investment banking in the 1980s deserves it classic status.

He writes about the investment bank Salomon Brothers from 1980 to 1987. The first years of Lewis' (nonfictional) story the bank does tremendously well, growing to the largest investment bank on Wall Street.

This fantastic growth is due mostly to the bond trading department. The new monetary policy paradigm, introduced by Fed chairman Paul Volcker, means interest rates vary wildly. That opens the door to trading opportunities.

In 1979 Lew Ranieri is made head of the mortgage operations of Salomon. He hardly makes any money before the Congress gives tax incentives to the savings and loans, if they sell their mortgages, in 1981. The development of the mortgage securities market is vividly described, and very interesting to read today.

From 1985, Salomon gets into trouble. The cunning Michael Milken makes junk bonds the new fad, and steals customers and traders away from Salomon.

Michael Lewis, the author, quits in 1988, and that ends the book. Salomon goes on until it is acquired by Travelers and then Citigroup in 1998.

Liar's Poker is easy and fun to read, despite being accurate and rather specific on many issues of bond trading. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the development of modern finance. It made me understand the crisis of 2009 better.

I am only half the way through the book and I have learned more about trading than the past 20 years. Like everyone I believed in the orderliness of the market. This book gives you great insight into the large trading companies like Salomon Brothers and the practices of the mortgage market. You will walk away with your head shaking. Incredible book.

Marty Lenow

This is a prophetic story. Michael Lewis is a gifted writer. The ethos of our "credit society" is revealed, in no uncertain terms. A must read for all.

Great book, definitely worth a read, especially if you're in the finance industry. Amazing that the mortgage bomb has finally exploded.

Brilliant! I recommend this book for anyone who wants to work on Wall Street. It's a brilliant account of what many on the street are like. Though it was written years ago...nothing has changed.

Michael Lewis does a brilliant job of bringing the reader onto the floor with the traders and playing poker with that dollar.

This was a pretty good book because it tells you things that make you want to keep listening, it holds your attention. You will learn some things from this book. The only bad thing about this book that i didnt like was how the author occasionally went off on unusual/complicated tangents when describing things. The kind of sentences you have to read atleast 3 times.....but i still recommend it. FIASCO was also very good.

sayanora

Anyone looking for an idea of what its like to work at an investment bank MUST read this book.

Exciting, entertaining and very informative. No matter what books you typically read you will enjoy this one.

If you even wondered what people do and what knd of people there are in those big buildings on Wall Street, this is your book. You see, from an insider's ironic detachment, how clueless these people were, how little they understood what they were doing with the incredible amounts of money seeking to make more money. Not only do they care little about what they are doing for their shareholders, but they make bad mistakes that ruins lives. The excesses - like huge buckets of guacamole for snacks or unbelievable arrogance - are sickening after a while.

Lewis writes extremely well, truly a unique voice. While I felt a bit disappointed pnce I finished the book as I gained little understanding of the protagonists' motivation and reflcetions (assuming they had any), the descriptions of what it was like are very interesting.

Recommended.

My son (18) read this and was on the floor, laughing. He recommended it as an hilarious read, and--having heard about it--I read it. It was truly interesting and informative, especially about the initial construction of the mortgage-backed securities that are tanking today, but I guess I was used to the shenanigans and excesses of the moneyed Wall Street types. I laughed once, at an image of trying to buy $400 of Mexican food (in the mid-80's). The book is well worth reading, but I would not buy it for the laughs.

... but not nearly as much as Wall Street Meat. However, this is one of the optional-but-strongly-recommended MBA books.

This is the real story about wall street firms and the way they look at their clients. Beware that you may not like the way they look at you. It is a good wake up call for those who think their broker is always looking out for their best interests. Very entertaining with great stories. You won't want to put it down!

This is a Story of experence from the eyes of Lewis. He writes so well, it actualty helped me write my descriptive term paper alot better than if I hadn't of read it. From Ranari's Office office sword collection to screwing over European fund managers, he covers the most exotic and most unusual day to day things he witnessed in his time at Salamon Brothers. Great look into the culture of Wall St. This book is one of my top 5 books I've read.

One hardly expects a book about bond traders in the 80s to be interesting to anyone except bond traders, but I found this book fascinating. I read it on the very strong recommendation of a teacher and found it interesting, personality-driven, and very well written. A must-read for anyone involved in any aspect of banking, and a great read for anyone else who wants an easy intro to financial concepts like mortgage-backed securities.

A critical insight into the world of investment banking and bond trading in the eighties. Written as both a first hand perspective into the recruitment, training and operation of Saloman Brothers and as a critique of the culture of Wall St at that time. The author also analyses the trends that led to the downfall of system and to his eentual decision to leave the "only sure chance to become a millionaire".

A must for all business students of those involved in the industry.

This is a great read! Humorous, intelligent and just a little poignant... Home run for those who are interested in the big stock business of the 1980's and the rise and fall of the decadent era of our capitalism at its best.

Characters are captivating, and you really have a hard time stopping mid-chapter.

This was one of the first books I ever read about Wall Street. I loved it and ultimately pursued a career in the capital markets. The trading desks are no longer the way they were back in the 80's, however, still a ton of fun.
I highly recommend reading Liar's Poker.

Sven Klein, Santa Barbara, CA

If you're looking for an insider's view of investment banking in the mid 1980s - then this is the book for you.

If you're interested in the history of mortgage backed securities and junk bonds - then you might find something of interest here.

If you're interested in what Salomon Brothers got up to in the 1980s - then you should check this book out.

If you work in investment banking - then you have probably already have read this book.

If you have dealings with investment bankers - then you should read this book.

Easy-to-read; ironic; engaging and entertaining. Trading floors aren't quite like this anymore but that's only because things are (a little) more PC these days.

Two thumbs up.

Michael Lewis was a bond trader himself, so he seems to know the things he writes about. I like this book very much, for it not only covers the history of mortgage-backed securities (MBS, CMO) but also does a great job of explaining many financial concepts underlying the stuff.

If you want a book that allows you to dream about the good old days where money was in plenty, attitudes rained supreme, and traders made big bets calling each others bluff, then this book is for you.

These times may not come back for a very long time, but it is in some ways parallel to the dot-com days in its exceptional nature of being out of the ordinary with a wealthy aroma in the air. Brokerage firms as described in Liar's Poker still have much of the same personalities, although cut throat competition has made it a much different landscape and not nearly as profitable as it once was. Still, if you work in the financial services sector, this is a good book to get back to the roots of the more mature bigwigs in your office that still have their moneyclips.

"Liar's Poker" is worth a read if you want an insider's account of life on Wall Street. The book doesn't pretend to glorify the easy money that Lewis and his ilk made during the bond schlepping go-go days of the 1980's. Rather, Lewis is disillusioned by the greedy culture and hypocritical short-sightedness at Salomon Brothers, but not enough that he doesn't enjoy the ride for a few oh-so-profitable years. Like his other books, "Liar's Poker" is fun to read. His anecdotes about the training program and the trading floor, albeit surely embellished, read like a day at the amusement park. The key shortcoming is an oozy 20-something self-righteousness that pervades many of the book's chapters, and reaches a crescendo in the final pages. But hey, arrogance begets credibility. And when it comes to describing Wall Street in the 1980's, Lewis is as credible a spokesman as anyone.

An excellent book by an excellent author. I highly recommend it. Liar's Poker and Moneyball are Lewis at his best.

This is the author's coming of age story, set in the world of investment banking in the 1980s. As a growth and wisdom book, it's pretty good, but it's really a non-fiction version of Tom Wolf's Bonfire of the Vanities. Of course what makes it interesting is that Michael Lewis came of age by successfully trading bonds for Solomon Brothers.

Among other aspects of the firm, LP describes Solomon's Mortgage Bonds department, its influence over the savings and loans, and the effect of Fed Chairman Paul Volker's 1981 decision to let interest rates float. Lewis does a brilliant job of explaining how this lead to S&L's selling their mortgages in order to fund investments in higher yield securities.

Here's the catch: Liar's Poker appeared before the S&L debacle but it laid out all the signs needed to predict the disaster to come.

Much of the hand wringing over S&Ls in the early 90's could maybe have been avoided if the warnings given in this book had been acted upon. To be fair, the warnings are clear but they are implicit. Lewis never actually projects the current state of the S&L industry into the future, even if he does mention that the basic problem with mortgages (short term funding of long term loans) is not solved.

Good read.

Liar's Poker is an excellent view into the bond trading industry during the 1980s. It offers details on specific events that shaped and changed Salomon Brothers as well as the ethical and moral behaviors of bond traders during the time period. It touches upon the issues of money (compensation), loyalty to the employer, loyalty to the customer and LBO attempts. The book did not flow as well as it could, but overall it was an interesting read. I recommend this book if you want to learn more about the 1980s bond market or are interested in compensation and office politics.

A well balanced book as it is both funny, surprising and astonishing without loosing it's focus. It remains a very comfortable read at the same time as it portrays a company culture and ways of doing business that are as incredible as they are destructive. If you are going to read one book within this genre, this is it! It is a definitive classic within it's genre and a must read.

If you want a glimpse into the 1980's world of institutional equity trading/sales, this is the book. Captivating! I worked on a trading floor for several years, and this book is right on!

Funny, educational, intelligently written. This led me to Moneyball and on to New New Thing, none disappointed. Lewis is the Tom Wolfe of his generation. MUST READ

There's no other word to describe this book. I haven't laughed out loud this many times while reading any other book I can remember. A must read for anyone who has ever worked in Corporate America and especially the investment/finance business. A charmingly witty and brilliant inside look at the game of snakes and ladders the investment banking industry can be....

Being a sports fanatic, I started into Michael Lewis' work with Moneyball, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The crossover to the realm of investment banking has been just as entertaining. Even though Liar's poker was first published when I was young child, I found it very insightful and educational. The flow of the book was consistent and kept my attention span of a young adult. I could not put this book down. A great read for the young and old.

From Art history major to Bond trading geek at Investment Banking firm of Salomon Brothers, Michael Lewis, in a lovely, humorous way, describes his career journey - and with a lot of peppered wit and honesty. His description of his entry into the firm of the stinking rich and moderately restrained team of Bond Traders was funny, I thought. So was the description of the BSDs (Big Swinging D***) and their attitudes. There are many such instances in this great book

He describes with great detail, and often with shocking honesty, the way the Bond Trading firms then worked. In fact, I strongly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in the way Wall Street firms have worked, and the way they have earned their money, and continue to do so, Eric Spitzer or no Eric Spitzer! He writes charmingly, and the narrative is often captivating. Entertaining and Unputdownable..!!

Readers could also follow this book up with 'When Genius Failed', which continues with the story of greed and danger (and Merriwether !)

Fascinating! All finance majors who dream to work on Wall Street must read it. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. This is one of the funnies books I have ever read.

Lewis'accounts of the bond trader is not to be missed. Don't pass this one up if you like Monkey Business or Barbarian at the Gates.

This is Michael Lewis's first book, and in my opinion by far the best. It takes place at Salomon Brothers, the famed former investment bank (now part of Citigroup) that had a reputation for a brash culture and greed. Michael is a new member of the sales and trading desk in the 1980s, a time when Salomon dominated the bond markets and pioneered the mortgage backed securities market.

In an often cynical but always humorous style, the author describes the internal dynamics of Salomon, where testosterone filled the trading floor and greed was placed above everything. Since the book was published, Salomon got in a lot of trouble for illegal actions in the government securtities market, involving Gutfreund (in the book) and Meriwether (of When Genius Failed fame). In was actually interesting to meet one of the characters, Mike Mortara, who was at the time head of fixed income at Goldman Sachs.

Overall this is a funny little entertaining book, and a must if you are going to work on Wall Street, since people assume you are familiar with it and may even quote from it.

Hysterical assesment of the Investment banking industry. This should be a must read of any college student wanting to make it in Investment banking. Describes in detail how millions were made very quickly by taking advantage of the stupidity, or ignorance of those with money. The author give an acurate account of the industry with out being as pretentious as you would think an investment banker would be, he is quick to tell the reader that he did make a lot of mistakes due to his own ignorance. Really a great read.

Lewis is articulate, insightful, cynical, and hilarious in his analysis on the rise and fall of Investment Banking at Solomon Brothers during the 1980s. Liar's Poker is a brilliant portrayal of Wall Street during an era of unprecedented greed and arrogance. Until the early 1980s, equity traders were the most revered people in the industry. However, unforeseen circumstances, largely spurred by the highly leveraged Savings & Loan industry, led to the innovation of new types of financial derivatives. Essentially overnight, a new market for bonds was created for speculators and commercial banks. Volume and profits soared on the bond trading floor, and from that point on the bond traders were the "big swinging ...." of investment banking.

So, against the backdrop of billion-dollar deals and million-dollar salaries enters Michael Lewis, Princeton Art History major and unlikely protagonist. His depiction of the Fraternity-like culture of investment banking is laugh-out-loud, I wish I had thought of that, funny. Lewis reaches rare form in describing the Solomon mortgage traders, a group of fat, mean Italian men with street smarts and a dislike for Ivy League MBAs and every other group within the firm.

Nonetheless, Liar's poker is more than just funny-it's insightful. Lewis combines personal narrative and investigative journalism to present a fresh perspective on the collapse of Solomon Brothers. He argues that Solomon's superiority complex resulted in a failure to react to the changing trends in the industry and the retention of key personal. This book is a quick read and a lot of fun. I wouldn't list it as a reference in an academic publication but it's a great addition to the bookshelf.

I read liar's poker on the sunday i reached my b-school campus, monday was to be my first day towards an mba. I can still recall myself laughing away in the night hoping that neighbours dont find me crazy.

Liar's poker is witty, makes sense either has you aspire to be on the street or makes you nod your head saying "I knew they are all rotten a lot". There are some who cant read beyond page 50, seriously disgusted at the mockery made of a serious bond deal.

What is great about liars poker is the queerness of the characters and the fact that the author in principle hates what he is doing yet in life loves veery moment of it, or at least aspires to. The Human Pirhana is my personel favourite..a Harvard grad and the master of ... speak...its definitely well written.

The book is not about its story, or the philosopical interpretations one may make about it..its simply a adrenalin driven story of a breed of people who thrive on risk, who leave their morals on their bed when they wake up, whose business is to play with money, whose religion is to make money on the seventh decimal place of the value of a bond...who havge guts of steel to be able to have a coffee after suffering a milion dollar loss, and ac as if nothing happenned after they make a milion..of course the do shout it on the hoot and the holler!!!

This is not a finance book, its a book about a breed of people, their life, their world, their religion, where all that maktters is how strong you are inside, how worthy a man (yes) are you, what kind of life do you want it to be...

Read it wheher you are into finance of not, it would be an enjoyable experience.

I could not put the book down once I started reading it. The books is extremely funny and very well written. If you like this book, you might like Mokey Business by John Rolfe and Peter Troob. Looking into the state of market and the scandals that have wrecked investor confidence, I would have to believe in what the author has written.

Great read. Insightful and funny. Strongly recommend it.

Liar's Poker offers a refreshing, amusing, and deeply cynical look at the investment banking world of the early 1980's, when Masters of the Universe lorded over all they surveyed (in their own minds anyway).

This book was one of the earliest to roll back the i-banker canopy of secrecy and respectability, revealing Wall Street at its heart... a bunch of thuggish suits with varying levels of pedigree, endlessly looking for new and creative ways to mug their clients. Though the book is old, the flavor and rhythms are timeless. Some of the criticism is fair, some of it unfair... yet many years later, it's the same old Street.

Because Lewis writes dispassionately and objectively, his words hit home all the more. He comes across as a excellent story teller, not much more or less. (This seems to be the way he wants it.)

In my earlier days of getting acquainted with markets, I often wondered how investment banks could hire rooms full of "traders" and have most of those traders be profitable. If trading requires a special talent or mindset, which it definitely seems to, how is it that all these ivy league guys can be good at trading en masse, especially when they have zero patience and huge egos?

Based on the Liar's Poker picture, the answer is that most of the "traders" in the employ of large investment banks are not trading in the true sense of the word. They are either siphoning money from unwitting customers with the help of product-pushing salesmen (no different than run of the mill brokers, except higher class), or else they are taking a bite out of the bid/ask spread, which is what many floor traders do. In exchange for providing liquidity, floor traders act as slippage extractors of a sort; the `skid' you see between order price and fill price is what goes in their pocket. This type of thing is more about exploiting a structural advantage, and less about competition with other traders.

Surprisingly, Michael Milken was one of the few who came out of this book looking like a winner. The rest of the world wrote Milken off as a crook without actually looking into what he did or how he made a fortune. Lewis gives a clear and lucid explanation of Milken's big idea--that the investment world as a whole had its credit rating apparatus backwards, due to a skewed perspective of corporate credit risk. The book recalls in some detail how Milken was able to leverage this single idea, with a sheer force of will, into billions of dollars in junk bond profits.

As a side note, even after reading Den of Thieves (an excellent book that chronicles Milken's ultimate fall), I still wonder if he got the short end of the stick--painted as a crook because he was exceptionally greedy and made obscene amounts of money, rather than any truly grievous wrongdoing. The massive contribution Milken made to the capital markets was to reshape the assessment of credit overall, increasing the efficiency of capital deployment across the globe. This surely gives him claim to a better reputation than the one he's gotten from the press thus far.

If you read this book and enjoy it, you might want to note that a 1990's successor to Liar's Poker is Fiasco: Blood in the water on Wall Street, written by another bond insider whose moral qualms eventually force him off the Street.

One of my favorite books. Hilarious! A must read for any I-banker or I-banker wanna-be.

I picked this up off of a bookshelf at a cabin I was staying in for a week and had trouble putting it down. The section on the mortgage traders is worth the price of the book alone. "They committed acts of gluttony, the likes of which had never been seen on Wall Street before." Lewis' vivid descriptions of these guys had me rolling. Near the end he gets a bit cynical, but it doesn't take away from the rest of the story.

Finally read this book my first semester of business school, after wanting to for years. Not only insightful and educational, it was greatly entertaining as well. Michael Lewis has proven himself to be a knowledgable author and a charming storyteller.

If you are already in love with investment banking, this book will not dissuade you.

If you already hate investment bankers, this book will give you plenty more ammo.

Liar's Poker is to the 80s what Frank Partnoy's F.I.A.S.C.O is to the 90s, with the notable exceptions that Liar's Poker is well written, it's funny and its author obviously understood what was going on. Where Partnoy (unwittingly) portrays himself as an impressionable geek, Lewis by deliberately painting himself that way is a disarming and likeable narrator.

If skulduggery on the trading floor is your bag, then this is the book for you - give Partnoy's feeble impression the swerve.

Michael Lewis told his story and the story of the fall of Salomon Brothers just like it happened. I loved this book at the beginning and the middle, but my interest started to fade toward the end. Much of the end of the book is devoted to the fall of Salomon Brothers, just not interesting stuff.

The story itself (excluding the last few tedious chapters) is entertaining and halarious. Lewis' history with Salomon Brothers is recounted and told excellently. If you would like to get a glimpse inside a mighty Wall Street investment bank and its workings, I highly recommend this book. Only reason for four stars, I've read better....

This is a wonderful read. It tells the history of eighties finance through the vantage-point of one firm, Saloman Brothers. Lewis' writing is lucid and engaging, it reads like a novel, but is very informative.

after reading various books on finance/investing/money, i found it highly refreshing to read a story-based book... one that encapsulates the joys and spoils of being a bond trader during the days of michael milken, salomon brothers and the likes.

gaining an inside perspective of how the market functions and who the money movers are is truly educational... being blind to the stories in this book is like trying to sail in the ocean without a mast!

although i found the book to be gauged in the days when bonds were hot and exciting, the overall reading experience was great.

from bonds, to mortgages, to interest rates, to the federal reserve, to bust... worth your time. enjoy...

As soon as I opened this book, I was not able to put it down. I read it for a few hours non-stop, until I finished it. Although Wall Street has changed a great deal, since the time period described in Lewis' book, I think it is still very entertaining and informative. I only wish I read this as a freshman. The book pretty much walks you through the Wall Street culture of the 80's. I wish he knew more about derivatives, so he could get into the causes of the '87 crash. If you're thinking of working on Wall street, be it sales or trading, and haven't read this book yet, read it.

I worked for CSFB for three years, and am still in investment banking for a smaller firm. So I have seen a part of the world that is described here. I'm not saying that this is an exact description of what I saw, because Lewis picks the most exotic creatures that he met, but the atmosphere is perfectly conveyed. This book will tell you all the stuff that they don't teach you in an interview or recruitment visit - the pecking order, the politics, and how to get paid.

The other reason to read this is that Lewis is a brilliant writer, with a real talent for describing people and their situations. Lots of other people have written boring books with the same raw material. For a non-specialist like my mother, the technicalities were hard work, but you don't need a lot of special knowledge to like this book. My mother certainly did.

Probably the best way to look at this book is like a travel book - you're not visiting a country, you're visiting a world. Great travel books are not word-perfect descriptions of a place, they are representations of what the author felt like when he was there, and they give the reader a feeling of what it was like to be there. If you read this book, you will understand what it feels like to work inside a big bank, and you'll enjoy the ride, even if you have no interest in actually working there.

After have being reading many books on finance looking for a deeper knowledge, I saw the light. It doesn't matter what black shoultz formulas, beta values, fundamental analysis or technical patterns actually are. All these techniques are obvously usefull and necessary to be known (mainly to be able to speak about it), but bussines is another thing. Finance, understood as how money is moved and earned, is something else. It is closer to a good bottle of wine than to a better financial model. A hard lesson for a lover of techniques. From then, I saw markets in a very different way. The myth of shinning experts overcoming the market was blown-away. This is a useull learning to be applied in many areas of life and business.

What an enjoyable book this was. I am so excited when I walk through a bookstore and come across a hidden treasure. The book describes life in a Wall Street investment bank in the 80s. What's so amazing about it is that it's real and all this actually happened somewhere sometime (and probably still does). An added bonus is the education you get on certain aspects of the markets such as fixed-income (bond) trading and how the industry is always looking for new ways to confuse the average joe. If you have some time on your hands, read this book, it can't hurt and it will only take about two days.

Fascinating and entertaining look into the life of a trader at Saloman Brothers during the eighties. Most books about Wall Street seem dry and uninteresting to the outsider but Lewis has presented a humorous and enlightening story that you just can't put down. If you are at all curious as to what goes on inside Wall Street you must read this book.

I have not read a more interesting book about the "going ons" on Wall Street then Liar's Poker. It keeps you turning the pages with his subtle and sometimes "in your face" humor that makes this book very funny and exciting. Absolutely one of the best books I have ever read.

This is one the best books about ANY subject. Even if you are not interested in finance, you can still find it amusing. Any critisisms that the book is exagerated (so what?), that the author comes across as holier than thou, are completly beside the point.

After working for two years (going on my third before I graduate) in trading as an intern in college, I finally came around to read this wicked and funny book. It really gave me a new perspective on my experiences and an education on how the business evolved. Do not believe all you read- traders are more civilized nowadays. They don't swing phone handsets at trainees lke myself, nor they have food frenzies every Friday and are generally better educated and a bit more refined than what Lewis depicts them to be. However, this book really tells the insider's view of the trading world from spotting "Big Swingin Dicks" (and "Dickettes")to the trading floor culture to unwritten rules and codes that can make or break a new trainee. A very fast and enjoyable read recomended for all finance students and soon to be traders like myself.($$$$$$$$)

I read this book my senior year in high school and it blew my mind. It is proably the best insight into the real life of a Wall Street businessman. It puts a humorous twist on the field of business trading. I recomend this book to anyone who is intrested in business or studying business.

One of the most biting "insider" critiques of 1980s Wall Street personalities and practices. Fairly readable, Liar's Poker blends humor and critique in an entertaining way. The book was written well enough to entice me to read Lewis' later compilation of essays on similar topics, The Money Culture.

As the Human Piranha, a character in the book, would say, this book is a 'f***** good read'. Read it if you are into investment banking. You will learn a lot and enjoy yourself in the process.

Look into the 80's and investment banking, what goes on inside Solomon Bros. and developments of the time.

very good two thumbs u

I strongly recommend it. Fat and greedy traders of Salomon Brothers look like Gargantua of Rabelais.

Great Book. For anyone in the industry a must read

A totally new perspective on the inside happenings in an investment bank. An absolute must for anyone interested in investment banking as a career. Lewis has the fantastic ability of putting some of the complicated financial mumbo-jumbo very lucidly. Highly recommended!

one of the best books I have ever read. All the good thing i heard about it were true. Michael Lewis does a great job relating his experience. I highly recond this book

Excellent book. Makes you wonder what kind of epic would have resulted had he remained on the "Street" for 10 years ? If you want to read about a realistic, concise, and funny account of what happens in such mammoth securities firms such as "Solly", get this book. Told it was required reading in MBA programmes. I believe it .

I couldn't take the book out of sight! For those who were not aware of the 80's frenzy financial style, this book is a must

Anybody looking for a sober review of the financial markets in the 1980's and/or Salomon Brothers' role in it will be disappointed. However, as a review of one man's experience on Wall Street, it is suoerb. Michael Lewis is a wonderful storyteller, and he writes this book so that you don't need a deep knowledge of finance to enjoy it.

Excellent penmanship, entertaining stories that encapsulate wallstreet in the 1980's. A hodge-podge of math, economics, politics, and character descriptions that provide valuable insight into why WallStreet has developed to what it is today. Great reading for beginners and veterans alike. Loved it.

By far this book should be a MUST for all those mojoring in Finance like myself. It explains everything they don't teach you in school and prepares you to walk down Wall St. and state your claim. Liar's Poker helps explain many questions you could not ask in class. Laugh all the way from beginning to end. Thank you M. Lewis.

One of the best books of all time. It gives a very interesting historical view of the inner workings of Salomon Brothers, the establishment of the bond market, and the life of a trader. A good read for someone interested in working in trading.

Want to know what happened on the street from an insider? Want to laugh while learning how the bonds market was created? Want learn of the "glamorous" life of a salesman? Then buy that book!

This is one of the most informative and witty books about Wall Street. If you read this, The Predators Ball, and Money Culture, you can call yourself an informed investor. This book shows us the personal side of Wall Street, not just charts and numbers (although some personalities are based on these numbers). A Great read, well worth the money and time.

excellent account of the excess wealth generated by traders in the 1980s. Tells of below-average intelligence generating billions of dollars, and the resulting downfall of Salomon Brothers due to the management myopia. a must read.

After reading Liar's Poker, you'll feel as I do that you have lived through the '80s on Wall Street with Lewis.