Very good book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is has any interest in stocks, investing, wall street, or just the impact of financial policy on the general economy.

Michael Lewis is a great writer, of unique background, who found himself in very exciting circumstances, during very peculiar times. It was written in a very novel way, that varied between first person and third person writing styles, and it still amazes me that everything is based on true historical events.

This book contains a very good historical account of exactly what happened at Salomon brothers in the late 70s and 80s. Lewis Ranieri’s rise and fall, along with mortgage bond market. The precedence of Junk Bonds. The crash of the late 80s. Relationships between a trader and his client, a trader and his rabbis, between members of the same company, or even different companies. This book was extremely educational while maintaining a great sense of excitement and intrigue throughout. There was definitely never a dull moment. I loved reading about the back and from row student’s in the training class as much as I did about John Gutfreund battle with Michael Milken.

Most importantly, this book was not simply a historical regurgitation of various events, nor was it just an individual’s recollection of their time in the company, it was an amalgamation of an insider’s opinion, experience and point of view as he takes you on a journey through one of the most exciting times on Wall Street. Filled with insider rumors and jokes, Michael Lewis is the only man who could’ve written this book, and he wrote it to perfection.

Đọc Lewis thì khỏi phải nói rồi, rất thỏa mãn ở khía cạnh giải trí. Đây có lẽ là một trong những quyển thú vị ngôn ngữ nhất về phố Wall (đọc là: buồn cười) mà tôi đọc được. Nếu Flash Boys hơi nặng tính kỹ thuật và chỉ trích, The Undoing Project thiên về tính lịch sử và thán phục thì Liar’s Poker, đúng như cái tên, nghiêng về những trò mánh khóe và lừa bịp (The Big Short và Moneyball thì tôi mới chỉ xem phim, chưa đọc sách).

Với những kinh nghiệm ít ỏi của tôi khi còn “ở bên trong” thị trường chứng khoán thì quả đúng là như vậy. Không phải ngẫu nhiên mà đây là nơi tập trung những kẻ thông minh nhất quả đất vào làm việc và chém giết nhau (nơi thông minh thứ nhì chắc là NASA).

Tóm lại là thống khoái.

This was a fascinating book to be reading in the midst of the biggest financial crisis of the past 75 years. Liar's Poker records the author's experience as a bonds trader for Solomon Brothers, at the height of the 80's trading explosion - an accurate, and frightening, account of the ludicrous nature of the whole industry. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the book is the attitude of the traders: to make money at any cost, regardless of the consequences. In this world, it was perfectly acceptable to "blow-up" (bankrupt) a customer with a trade, because the company would make a hefty commission, regardless of the outcome for the others involved in the trade.

It's easy to see how the groundwork for our current financial mess was laid in this environment. Lewis talks about how new sources of income were constantly being made by cutting up bonds into new derivative securities - similar to the derivatives used from the sub-prime mortgages. When they mortgages collapses, so did all the derivative securities - but the obfuscation was deep enough so that many, many people bought those derivatives who should have known better.

Overall, Liar's Poker is well-written and entertaining enough to recommend to anyone, but it's also a disturbingly enlightening lens through which to see our current financial struggles.

Funny and Insightful

This is great book for someone who wants to get a taste of financial markets in the 70s/80s. The book glorifies the greediness of the traders. It gives great insight on the rise and the fall of Solomon Brothers, and Michael Lewis writes many behind the scenes incidents which helps adding some humor to the history!

I think that Michael Lewis is a superb writer. He takes a complex topic, such as mortgage-backed securities, and explains them so that your every(wo)man can understand them. He is also a great observer of human character, and he writes about people with great aplomb. I feel as if I personally know his characters. While the subject matter of investment banking in the 1980s is filled with blind greed, leaving the reader disgusted, Lewis manages to make this book a fabulous read.

1980 Wall Street.

Michael Lewis's personal account of working at the Wall Street. Wild ride of working at Solomon Brothers, making and looking millions. Since then there are some changes are made, but are they enough?

Michael Lewis lives up to his reputation with this book. It’s quite entertaining and provides an interesting perspective on Wall Street’s culture (at least in the 80s), which is often not as serious as it seems from the outside. It also provides some interesting insight into the early roots of the global financial crisis. I think I would have enjoyed if Lewis had included more high-level reflection on the role of institutions like Solomon Brothers and the effects of glorification of Wall Street - much of what sticks with me years after reading are the silly stories about various shenanigans in the office.

This is the author's narrative of his experience working at Salomon Brothers, at one time the biggest investment bank on Wall Street and probably the world. The book is a sarcastic look into the world of high finance with wit and humor laced in the narrative. Investment banks are generally known as the hotbed of high net worth employees who sell products (equities, debt, bonds and mortgages here) to gullible, often clueless, investors at huge profits to satisfy their ever-increasing appetite for humongous profits. Corporate greed is the underlying message of the book and the cast of characters are the unscrupulous traders dotting the landscape.

The author is actually an art history student who somehow stumbles onto to the investment banking job, mainly just because every smart ivy League graduate seemed to be joining one. Somewhere down the years he is somewhat disillusioned by the profession and quits. The book is definitely insightful and educative. Some terms like CMOs, junk bonds etc are so lucidly explained that even a layman will be able to understand. Reading this book 30 years after it was first published. So many changes have taken place and so many firms have ceased to exist since. The book is funny at places but monotony of the narrative gets to you after a point of time.

Michael Lewis' story of the debaucherous 1980's Investment Banking scene is fun and crazy and pretty funny. I'm not too sure why this book gets so much praise, but I am assuming that when the book came out, it shed light on a very mysterious scene that not many other forms of media had covered. Now we have the Wall Street world popularized by a ton of different outlets, and the events in this book seem less extraordinary.

The book provides several little finance gems here and there, and also gave a lot of background and some interesting thoughts on how the financial system worked (works?). Although bond trading is very different now, I feel like those hardcore salesmen have just moved into equities for the present time. Perhaps if we ever have floating rates again, bonds will resurface. It would be interesting to read something like this on the options and swap world of today.

The book is an easy and fun read, and although tells a relatively straightforward story of the main character's dive into the Finance world, remains engaging and fast paced.

A great book which shows first hand experience of a trainee when he enters the bond market when it was at its peak. It showcases the care (pun intended) that Salomon Brothers and like took of their clients. A person with a portfolio of less than 100M is a scapegoat and guinea pig for the trainee's On the Job training. The fat paychecks that the bond traders and bond salesmen draw for duping the clients basis the fact that they know a little more than the clients is quite hilarious. However, in due course of time, through continuous learning, when you develop good relationship with clients and your conscience haunts you and you learn the trade secrets, you would eventually want not to dupe the clients :P.

Another interesting track in the events take place when you realize how office politics destroyed a firm, that could have been a leader in other market segments, such as money market. Overall, an interesting read if you want to know about how life is for a trader/bond salesman and why do companies fall due to internal politics.

Food for thought - Would you want to be a part of office politics, rise in life(maybe) and nosedive (maybe) [ Ranieri, Gutfreund] or you would want to shy away from the politics, do your work and go with the paycheck after every month and repeat the process month after month [Dash]

To write a non-fictional portrayal of your life during your 20s is not an easy task. To do this while still in your 20s, to have it be your first book, and to have the story revolve around bond trading / Wall Street - and not have the book be as dry as it sounds - seems an almost cruel undertaking. But Lewis managed to do this. Despite what would seem to be the worst idea for a first book, Lewis keeps the reader interested and turning pages, even with a cast of execrable people that are only made more loathsome by the fact that they do, indeed, exist.

With unwitting prescience, Lewis writes about the creation of the mortgage bond business in the early/mid '80s that would take center stage in 2008 during the global economic meltdown. The unadulterated, unchecked greed with which the bond traders knowingly fleeced "suckers" in the market is staggering not by the reaches of their malfeasance, but rather that those unsavory characters continue to exist, in increasingly more dastardly versions as the years go by, and in all areas of Wall Street, banking and government. I'm happy I read this book after The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine because it makes that more recent book much more poignant in retrospect. I can almost see Lewis' head shaking as he was penning "Big Short" realizing he had seen all of this first hand 20 years before, knowing that nothing would really be done to make meaningful changes to avert a future disaster, and that as this event plays out again and again into the future the reality is that there is going to be a time when the wheels come off for good - and no amount of government intervention or "market self correction" is going to fix the problem. Doomsday Machine, indeed.