nobody knows if a stock's going up, down, or sideways

 

I watched the Martin Scorsese-directed 2013 film, The Wolf Of Wall Street.  On Amazon Prime now.

That movie is weird.  Or maybe we should say, It's about some people who did some weird stuff.  It's based on a true story, as is Hustlers (Jennifer Lopez:  "Call the police?  What are they going to tell them, 'I spent five thousand dollars in a strip club -- send help'??").

In The Wolf of Wall Street, the people in it seemed to really like going out of control -- a lot.  It's hard to see how people want to live like that.  Some of it seems to be sort of a "gang mentality" -- they're trying to impress each other, and keep up with each other.

        I was suffering from a bad cold, and in some of the Wolf-Wall Street scenes I would look at Leonardo DiCaprio, how he appeared after a night of partying (and driving) -- I thought, "Gosh, he looks how I feel.  And he did it to himself by taking drugs.  I mean, he spent money to feel that way.

        (He should have called me and see me at work, I could cough near him and he could feel / look that way for free.)

        Watching that movie, I become like a Safety Manager:  "No!  Don't do that!  No!  NO!!"

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What he starts out doing, when he is hired on Wall Street, is cold-calling.  I did that at Shearson-American Express in Boston, the summer after graduating from college.  

The difference between my cold-calling and the cold-calling in the movie:  in the movie, the person doing the cold-calling is a licensed broker, and can move right into selling the person a stock, while on the phone.  

        I was not a licensed broker, I was an assistant, so I could not sell anything, I could just call and see if the person (usually a business owner) would like to speak with a broker.

I found a very low rate of "Yes," but no one was super rude or anything, which is kind of surprising when you reflect back on it.

        I didn't have to cold-call.  I learned about it from someone and asked if I could do it.  There was plenty of time in the day.

The way the stockbrokers behave in the film:  wild and crazy, even during the work-day -- they take drugs during their meetings!  The place where I worked, nothing was like that, at all.

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Martin Scorsese selects music for his movies that I like -- we have the same taste.  Some of the songs included in The Wolf of Wall Street:

Sloop John B

Mrs. Robinson

Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) by Billy Joel

Pretty Thing

    and Road Runner, by Bo Diddley

Dust My Broom (Elmore James)

Smokestack Lightning (Howlin' Wolf)

Gloria (by Laura Branigan)

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