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This is an InstaRead Summary of The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort.
Below is a preview of the earlier sections of the summary:
Prologue: A Babe in the Woods
It is May 1987, and Jordan Belfort is being led through the boardroom of LF Rothschild for the first time. Jordan feels out of place in his cheap blue suit. The room is filled with young, arrogant and expensively dressed stockbrokers. He might have just landed a job, albeit as a lowly connector. The lowest of the low, a connector spends the day dialing phone numbers and trying to get past the secretaries of potential clients. If successful, the call will be transferred to a broker who will sell them stock. Jordan’s new boss, Scott, reminds the new recruit that he is unlikely to make it through the six months of grueling training. At the moment, twenty-four year old Jordan is down on his luck and facing huge debt from a failed business. He is hoping he can get past the stockbroker training and start making as much as the brokers that are surrounding him, even more than Scott.
As Jordan sits down to wait for the markets to open, he is greeted by the firm’s most successful broker, Mark Hanna. Mark is already impressed with Jordan, who had started to pitch stock advice already at his job interview. Mark advises Jordan to take plenty of breaks during the day and to take cocaine to help him dial faster. At 9.30am the markets open and Jordan begins his first day on Wall street. The noise in the room is deafening as stocks are sold over the phone to some of the wealthiest people in the USA.
Jordan is exhausted by the time he is allowed to take a lunch break. Mark Hanna has noticed the high number of calls Jordan had passed to him during the morning. As a sign of gratitude, he invites the connector to join him for lunch in the penthouse restaurant. Mark doesn’t eat anything. He just drinks hard liquor and snorts cocaine. He offers both to Jordan. When the new recruit politely declines, Mark assures him that eventually Jordan will be using these vices to get through the day. In a few years, he will have been correct. Jordan will be making even more than Mark did now and employing many of the brokers that worked for LF Rothschild.
This book is a reconstruction of a wild ride that occurred in Wall street history. It is told through the internal voice which Jordan often speaks of in the book. The ‘voice’ is often how he justified many of the manipulative and self serving behaviors in which he engages.
Jordan grew up in middle class Queens, New York. He wants the reader to know that he was not brought up to behave the way he did during the 80s and 90s. Today he is a loving father committed to his children. He hopes that his serves as a cautionary tale to anyone who considers misusing their talents for greedy and evil purposes.
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