Fortunes could be amassed in ways that the average person could hardly understand, let alone begin to fathom. Stocks and currency could no longer be considered byproducts of the business world, they had become a business all unto themselves. For those willing and greedy enough to slash through a jungle of financial possibilities, this world could provide the kinds rewards that were once limited to royalty.
Navigating this financial frontier is the narrator of Wall Street Journeyman. From his humble upbringing in Pittsburg to his success on the Street, his story is one of international business romps, complex financial devices, and a particular venom for the not quite fictional firm of “Grossman Zachs”. Armed with an MBA and a desire to succeed, the journeyman tackles the opaque world of currency trading. It is a world that, even in his sparse prose style, can be difficult for the layman to understand. “The Head Options Trader told him to stop updating all the different tenors of implied volatilities for the various currency pairs as he had been dutifully doing several times a day.”
It is a world that is nevertheless kept interesting by the appearance of figures so brutal they require nicknames like the Poison Dwarf and the Sheriff. The journeyman encounters a disparate set of characters during his career though all tend to be hot for money and the seedier things that come with it. Readers interested in the front lines of international finance will find much to relish though those not already enamored with, say, futures market trading are unlikely to be won over.
After all, it can be difficult to empathize with someone who makes millions in an industry that seems devoted solely to making millions while providing very little of consequence to anyone else. Adulterous, self-righteous, and whiny about six-figure compensations, the narrator does not always endear himself though his attitude and contempt illuminate the industry he both loves and criticizes. Both raw and occasionally contemplative, readers interested in the men who make the market tick will not come away disappointed.
Reviewed by Collin Marchiando for IndieReader