Wall Street is a hub of financial experts. These experts keep finding some gaps in the market, which could be exploited to make loads of money. That is the story of Salomon Brothers as told by Michael Lewis in an amusing way.

Bond traders are known for their unusual habit of playing “Liar’s Poker” a one-of-a-kind game that pushes anyone beyond its limits and questions your ability to make split-second-decision, judge risk and increase/decrease your wealth.

The book shows the rise and collapse of Salomon Brothers. In general, it focuses on how they managed to increase their influence with the help of unethical methods and which resulted in their quick downfall. Before the crash in 1987, Salomon fired thousands of employees as a result of inadequate policies and practices used to regain control over the market. The time for growth ended, with the rise of other competitors who replicated Salomon Brothers’ methods to be used against them.

Liar’s Poker showcases the egocentric culture that prevails on Wall Street. The book describes the complete lack of etiquette and ethics among the traders. Lewis’s reflections on how the environment corrupted his soul makes it quite clear that an outsider has to be very skeptical of what Wall Street is trying to convince you of. They usually have but one interest - to make money at the other's expense.

I have read a few books by this author and Liar’s Poker might be my favorite. I enjoyed that in Liar’s Poker Lewis was able to tell stories that he experienced first hand, which allowed him to provide some additional - and often funny - details. I also appreciated the opportunity to learn more about financial history, without having to drudge through a dry financial book.

Reading Liar’s Poker might also motivate me to read Lewis’ other book, The Big Short (or at least rewatch the movie), since some of the events explained in Liar’s Poker set the stage for the Great Recession.

Ultimately this is a fun and quick read for anyone interested in finance/economics. Thanks to my bro @Dylan for the recommendation.

It didn't take long in my journey as an economics student to learn that the stock market effectively means nothing to the economy. It has become something of a mantra for me that the economy is not the stock market and the stock market is not the economy. As such, one of my biggest pet peeves is whenever someone posits that the economy is good / bad and their first piece of supporting "evidence" is the performance of the stock market. The stock market, from an economic point of view, is essentially a game of chance that people play with their money that reflects how people are feeling any given day (an explanation which one of my friends beautifully summarized as "astrology for finance bros" when I was on my soapbox about this one day). I had never taken much time to learn about the bond market during or after school (my interests are more along the microeconomic lines of game theory / industrial organization / trade theory rather than financial economics), but I had always assumed that this market was a little more tangible than stocks. I likely could have seen this coming from the title alone, but it quickly became clear through reading this book that the bond market is just as much of a game as the rest of what goes on on Wall Street.

One of the pervasive themes of this book is the all-encompassing fixation that Saloman Brothers and the other large Wall Street investment banks have on money. This manifests itself in two main ways that I found pretty detestable. The first was a disregard for customers who were viewed as less important (i.e., those who had less money to spend). These customers were treated as expendable, and firms leaned on several euphemisms to disguise the financial ruin in which some of these customers were left. This kind of dehumanization was pretty upsetting, and to Lewis's credit, he did not attempt to mask any of this behavior. The second consequence was a toxic and contentious atmosphere within the firm, especially toward women and workers who were more junior (minority workers would have presumably been on this list as well, but there were very few of them working at Saloman Brothers in the mid-1980's, which is a problem in itself). Lewis spent a decent amount of time covering the harassment of junior workers, which is understandable considering he himself experienced this treatment, but he spent much less time on the systemic efforts to withhold women from positions with influence or power. I believe Lewis's general methodology was to simply present the facts and allow the reader to arrive at their own conclusions, which is an approach that I broadly agree with, but I felt that this issue deserved a stronger indictment.

Overall, despite the level of disdain that I felt toward the greed that motivates many of the people in this book (and the amount of money they make doing work I view as relatively non-value-additive that enables this greed), I still found this book eye-opening and worthwhile. I don't think I can broadly recommend this book to all readers as some of the technical descriptions of the bond market would likely bore some people, but I think anyone who has existing interest in this general subject matter would likely get something out of reading this book.

21 years after publication, Liar's Poker feels both relevant and ancient. Relevant because it seems the Big Swinging Dicks of Wall Street are ever with us; ancient because of references to things like WATS lines and the lionizing of Salomon Brothers trader John Meriwether, whose Long-Term Capital Management would spectacularly implode in 1998, and Michael Milken, who apparently had not yet been indicted when the book went to press but got a 10-year prison sentence for securities violations.

Lewis is a raconteur more than a documentarian, which is both pleasing and irritating. Certainly raconteurs can sell more books. Most people don't want to read dry scholarly accounts of Wall Street. But there are times in the book (most of chapters 1-4) where his writerly persona is so big that it crowds out everything else. His tone is so arch, snarky, exaggerated, so swimming in eddies of simile and metaphor, that I don't completely believe him (though I'm sure the vague outlines of his story are true). He pairs bravado with disarming self-deprecation, telling us repeatedly how he was utterly green, knew nothing, stumbled his way through everything, yet brought a trader who had wronged him to his knees, and by the time he left Salomon was earning the largest bonus of his class (undeserved, he insists). He steps away from the tales of towel-slapping long enough to give a detailed history of the rise of mortgage trading at Salomon Brothers and how Salomon management allowed hegemony to slip through their fingers. (Raising the question, how did such a junior employee know so much about a) the mortgage market, and b) the internecine battles among Salomon bigwigs?) The portrait he paints of Salomon's chairman John Gutfreund is fairly devastating (though ancient history; Gutfreund would be forced out by Warren Buffett in 1991 after a Treasury bond scandal).

Some examples of his raconteurship:

Ranieri welded a coherent departmental personality out of two separate but equally gamy ethnic groups. (Italians and Jews, if you care.)

Buying whole loans (that is what the traders called home loans, to distinguish them from mortgage bonds) was an act of faith, like eating bologna.

For each step forward in market technology they [the traders:] took a step backward in human evolution...they became louder, ruder, fatter...

Their days began at 8 a.m. with a round of onion cheeseburgers. "We'd order four hundred dollars of Mexican food," says a former trader. "You can't buy four hundred dollars of Mexican food. But we'd try - guacamole in five-gallon drums, for a start. A customer would call in and ask us to bid or offer bonds, and you'd have to say, 'I'm sorry, but we're in the middle of the feeding frenzy. I'll have to call you back.'"

As always, a compulsively readable book from Michael Lewis. I knew that this would further indulge my distrust and resentment of Wall St. and it did just that. Also this was eerily prophetic with its explanation of the inception of mortgage backed securities and judgement of unsustainable finance strategies. Probably one a very few finance books that will make you laugh.

Started reading this book after “The Big Short”... And while it's still a good book, “The Big Short” was more interesting to me. I felt like the author jumps back and forth in dates too much and focuses more on the characters than any plot (if there is one).

It was interesting to learn what a mess these big financial organizations are. So big that they are hard to control. As a result, the global economy is hardly predictable. And there are no winners in that “Wild West”. Well...except for the mortician. Which is one that serves both sides. Broker in the context of the book.

Having had some exposure to the world of finance, I did find this to be an interesting read. "Liar's Poker" brings readers an insight look into the world of banking during the 1980's in which greed, corruption, ego, and shocking excess were omnipresent on Wall Street. The book hinges on Lewis' real world experience in the industry, which certainly adds credibility to the sometimes unbelievable stories he recounts.

The most memorable takeaway was the shocking behavior of "Professionals" within the field, and the toxicity that money culture can create.

I will always be the top fan of "The Big Short" and "Moneyball", but those looking for more Lewis content should pick up "Liar's Poker".

I downloaded the audible book after listening to Michael Lewis's interview with Tim Ferris and I'm so glad I did. First, the audiobook had great production value. It had recently been rerecorded by Pushkin industries and not only was it narrated by Michael Lewis himself, but it also had sound effects and music incorporated throughout the book.

I loved the story. Interesting to think that a book from the 80s is still relevant today. While I realize this was not the intention of Michael Lewis, boy, do I want to become an investment banker on Wall Street!

Will be reading the rest of his books over the holidays.

10 hours 16 mins on Audible

I finished this two days ago but I keep falling behind on posting my reading updates

It's rare to find a book that is both informative and also so funny that you actually laugh out loud, but Liar's Poker was that book for me

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.

This book surprised me. I read and enjoyed Lewis' Moneyball a while back, and thought I was getting another journalistic account, this time of a crazy moment in corporate culture. Instead, it's very much a memoir of that world. And I didn't care for it at first, since the group of people he writes about are so spectacularly awful. He brings a certain world of investment banking trainees home to you, and I wanted nothing to do with it. If that was the whole book, I don't think I could take it. Something like the way some people don't like The Office (esp. the BBC version); it's too painful to see such human lowness.

But I'm glad I stuck around, because he can really tell a story. The sense of battle, politicking, and putting up fronts. Wry observations. Big picture, little picture. He comes off as a whistle blower with no sense that he's betraying his world; just an inside man dissecting a world he finds amusing, deranged, and perversely fun.