“The same system that once gave us subprime mortgage collateralized debt obligations no investor could possibly truly understand now gave us stock… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The markets in the long run are no doubt driven by fundamental economic laws—if the United States runs a persistent trade deficit,… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
The big Wall Street firms, seemingly so shrewd and self-interested, had somehow become the dumb money. The people who ran them did… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
Looking into it a bit, Jamie found that the model used by Wall Street to price LEAPs, the Black-Scholes option pricing model,… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Someone out there was using the fact that stock market orders arrived at different times at different exchanges to front-run orders from… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
You could argue the banks are much better capitalised than they were going into the crisis, and everyone's in a much more… — 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
“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
“When Steve Eisman stumbled into this new, rapidly growing industry of specialty finance, the mortgage bond was about to be put to… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
The idea that it's smart to allow Wall Street firms, with this "too big to fail" imprimatur, to become hedge funds again… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“The gist of Laszlo’s pitch for the equity department was this question: When you turn on your television at six-thirty and Dan… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“In early July, Morgan Stanley received its first wake-up call. It came from Greg Lippmann and his bosses at Deutsche Bank, who,… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“Take a typical three-hundred-million-dollar CMO. It would be divided into three tranches, or slices of a hundred million dollars each. Investors in… — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“It is ludicrous to believe that asset bubbles can only be recognized in hindsight,” he wrote. “There are specific identifiers that are… — 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
“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
“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
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
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 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
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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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 Image
“You saw someone who reminded you of you, and then you looked for the reasons why you liked him. The” — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will. — Michael Lewis Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 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 of authority...[it is] quite likely that the fate of entire societies may be sealed by a series of avoidable mistakes committed by their leaders.” quote by Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a59/michael-lewis-705_decision-making_crucial-decisions-are-made-today-as-thou_16888.jpg)
