Warren Buffett is fond of saying that any player unaware of the fool in the market probably is the fool in the… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The U.S. stock market now trades inside black boxes, in heavily guarded buildings in New Jersey and Chicago.” — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
At SGI board meetings... Jim Clark's face would get red and he'd start shouting that an investor and board member had cheated… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The U.S. financial markets had always been either corrupt or about to be corrupted.” — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Ronan, for his part, couldn’t quite believe how ordinary the people on Wall Street were. “It’s a whole industry of bullshit,” he… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“They were less and less able to buy and sell big chunks of stock in a gulp.” — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Could Morgan Stanley please wire $1.2 billion to Deutsche Bank by the end of the day?” — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“As the U.S. stock market had grown less comprehensible, it had also become more sensationally erratic.” — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
The longer-term the option, the sillier the results generated by the Black-Scholes option pricing model, and the greater the opportunity for people… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Before Volcker’s speech, bonds had been conservative investments, into which investors put their savings when they didn’t fancy a gamble in the… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Long Beach Savings was the first existing bank to adopt what was called the “originate and sell” model. This proved such a… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
A credit default swap was confusing mainly because it wasn't really a swap at all. It was an insurance policy, typically on… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
Wall Street, with its army of brokers, analysts, and advisers funneling trillions of dollars into mutual funds, hedge funds, and private equity… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
The world clings to its old mental picture of the stock market because it’s comforting; because it’s so hard to draw a… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
In Wall Street now, you have to hide what you're doing. It's more fun when you don't have to do that. But… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
The model used by Wall Street to price trillions of dollar's worth of derivatives thought of the financial world as an orderly,… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The U.S. stock market now trades inside black boxes, in heavily guarded buildings in New Jersey and Chicago. What goes on inside… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The triple-A tranches all traded at one price, the triple-B tranches all traded at another, even though there were important differences from… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“There are a lot of really crappy bonds in these CDOs,’” said Charlie. They didn’t realize yet that the bonds inside their… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Back in July 2003, he’d written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
That was how a Salomon bond trader thought: He forgot whatever it was that he wanted to do for a minute and… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“A big Wall Street bank’s biggest advantage was its access to vast amounts of cheap risk capital and, with that, its ability… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“In early 2013, one of the largest high-frequency traders, Virtu Financial, publicly boasted that in five and a half years of trading… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Because the lenders sold many—though not all—of the loans they made to other investors, in the form of mortgage bonds, the industry… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“A credit default swap was confusing mainly because it wasn’t really a swap at all. It was an insurance policy, typically on… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“On its surface, the booming market in side bets on subprime mortgage bonds seemed to be the financial equivalent of fantasy football:… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“There was more than one way to think about Mike Burry’s purchase of a billion dollars in credit default swaps. The first… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The new structure of the U.S. stock market had removed the big Wall Street banks from their historic, lucrative role as intermediary.… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Many thrifts layered a billion dollars of brand-new loans on top of their existing, disastrous hundred million dollars of old loss-making loans,… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“When the Goldman Sachs saleswoman called Mike Burry and told him that her firm would be happy to sell him credit default… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Imagine, for instance, that someone passed a rule, in the U.S. stock market as it is currently configured, that required every stock… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“As they worked through the order types, they created a taxonomy of predatory behavior in the stock market. Broadly speaking, it appeared… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The old order types were simple and straightforward and mainly sensible. The new order types that accompanied the explosion of high-frequency trading… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
the lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual. — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
Wall Street is not being made a scapegoat for this crisis: they really did this. — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Allan confined himself to one investment decision: whether to buy shares in a new company when it went public.” — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“American bond traders may have sunk their firms by turning a blind eye to the risks in the subprime bond market, but… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Reg NMS was intended to create equality of opportunity in the U.S. stock market. Instead it institutionalized a more pernicious inequality. A… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The simple reason Goldman wasn’t making much of the big money now being made in the stock market was that the stock… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
Incredibly, at this critical juncture in financial history, after which so much changed so quickly, the only constraint in the subprime mortgage… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Crucial decisions are made, today as thousands of years ago, in terms of the intuitive guesses and preferences of a few men in positions… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“You saw someone who reminded you of you, and then you looked for the reasons why you liked him. The” — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“At other places management says, ‘Well, gee, fellas, do we really want to bet the ranch on this deal?’ Lewie was not only willing… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“BILLY WOULD SAY later that his wife left him because she was unnerved by his intensity—that she could even see it in his hands… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“The great thing about baseball players, from the point of view of personal hygiene, is how seldom they break a sweat.” — Michael Lewis Copy Share
There was but one question he left unasked, and it vibrated between his lines: if gross miscalculations of a person's value could occur on… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“The author refers to a player's affected nonchalance and comments he is, "too young to realize you are what you pretend to be.” — Michael Lewis Copy Share
A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will. — Michael Lewis Copy Share
Some coaches believed they could judge a player's performance simply by watching it. In this they were deeply mistaken. The naked eye was an… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“No longer were the prices of ordinary mortgage bonds allowed to roam inefficiently, for they were now linked to the CMO market, in much… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“The difference between Strauss and Ranieri?” says one trader still at Salomon. “That’s easy. Strauss wouldn’t stoop to use the men’s room on the… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“The only inexplicable aspect of the process was that economic theory (which is, after all, what economics students were supposed to know) served almost… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“It's not easy to stand apart from mass hysteria - to believe that most of what's in the financial news is wrong, to believe… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
“Someone out there was using the fact that stock market orders arrived at different times at different exchanges to front-run orders from one market… — Michael Lewis Copy Share
