In that very instant if someone told me that in just a few short years I would end up owning the very restaurant I was now sitting in and that Mark Hanna, along with half the other brokers at LF Rothschild would end up working for me, I would have said they were crazy. And if someone told me that I would be snorting lines of cocaine off the bar in this very restaurant, while a dozen high-class hookers looked on in admiration, I would say that they had lost their fucking mind.
But that would be only the beginning. You see, at that very moment there were things happening away from me—things that had nothing to do with me—starting with a little something called portfolio insurance,which was a computer-driven stock-hedging strategy that would ultimately put an end to this raging bull market and send the Dow Jones crashing down 508 points in a single day. And, from there, the chain of events that would ensue would be almost unimaginable. Wall Street would close down business for a time, and the investment-banking firm of LF Rothschild would be forced to shut its doors. And then the insanity would take hold.
What I offer you now is a reconstruction of that insanity—a satirical reconstruction—of what would turn out to be one of the wildest rides in Wall Street history. And I offer it to you in a voice that was playing inside my head at that very time. It’s an ironic voice, a glib voice, a self-serving voice, and, at many times, a despicable voice. It’s a voice that allowed me to rationalize anything that stood in my way of living a life of unbridled hedonism. It’s a voice that helped me corrupt other people—and manipulate them—and bring chaos and insanity to an entire generation of young Americans.
I grew up in a middle-class family in Bayside, Queens, where words like niggerand spickand wopand chinkwere considered the dirtiest of words—words that were never to be uttered under any circumstances. In my parents’ household, prejudices of any sort were heavily discouraged; they were considered the mental processes of inferior beings, of unenlightened beings. I have always felt this way: as a child, as an adolescent, and even at the height of the insanity. Yet dirty words like that would come to slip off my tongue with remarkable ease, especially as the insanity took hold. Of course, I would rationalize that out too—telling myself that this was Wall Street and, on Wall Street, there’s no time for symbolic pleasantries or societal niceties.
Why do I say these things to you? I say them because I want you to know who I really am and, more importantly, who I’m not. And I say these things because I have two children of my own, and I have a lot to explain to them one day. I’ll have to explain how their lovable dad, the very dad who now drives them to soccer games and shows up at their parent–teacher conferences and stays home on Friday nights and makes them Caesar salad from scratch, could have been such a despicable person once.
But what I sincerely hope is that my life serves as a cautionary tale to the rich and poor alike; to anyone who’s living with a spoon up their nose and a bunch of pills dissolving in their stomach sac; or to any person who’s considering taking a God-given gift and misusing it; to anyone who decides to go to the dark side of the force and live a life of unbridled hedonism. And to anyone who thinks there’s anything glamorous about being known as a Wolf of Wall Street.
BOOK I
CHAPTER 1
A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
Six Years Later
The insanity had quickly taken hold, and by the winter of ’93 I had this eerie feeling that I’d landed the starring role in one of those reality TV shows, before they came into vogue. The name of my show was Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional,and each day seemed to be growing more dysfunctional than the last.
I had started a brokerage firm named Stratton Oakmont, which was now one of the largest and by far the wildest brokerage firm in Wall Street history. The word on Wall Street was that I had an unadulterated death wish and that I was certain to put myself in the grave before I turned thirty. But that was nonsense, I knew, because I had just turned thirty-one and was still alive and kicking.
At this particular moment, a Wednesday morning in mid-December, I was sitting behind the controls of my twin-engine Bell Jet helicopter on my way from the 30th Street Heliport in midtown Manhattan to my estate in Old Brookville, Long Island, with enough drugs running through my circulatory system to sedate Guatemala.
It was a little after three a.m., and we were cruising along at a hundred twenty knots somewhere over the western edge of Long Island’s Little Neck Bay. I remember thinking how remarkable it was that I could fly a straight line while seeing two of everything, when suddenly I began to feel woozy. Then all at once the helicopter was in the midst of a steep dive and I could see the black waters of the bay rushing toward me. There was this terrible vibration coming from the helicopter’s main rotor, and I could hear the panic-stricken voice of my copilot coming through my headset, screaming frantically, “Jesus Christ, boss! Pull up! Pull up! We’re gonna crash! Holy shit!”
Then we were level again.
My loyal and trusted copilot, Captain Marc Elliot, was dressed in white and sitting before his own set of controls. But he’d been under strict orders not to touch them unless I either passed out cold or was in imminent danger of smashing into the earth. Now he was flying, which was probably best.
Captain Marc was one of those square-jawed captain-types, the sort who instills confidence in you at the mere sight of him. And it wasn’t only his jaw that was square; it was his entire body, which seemed to be comprised of squarish parts, unit-welded together, one atop the other. Even his black mustache was a perfect rectangle, and it sat on his stiff upper lip like an industrial-grade broom.
We’d taken off from Manhattan about ten minutes ago, after a long Tuesday evening that had spiraled way out of control. The night had started out innocently, though—at a trendy Park Avenue restaurant named Canastel’s, where I’d had dinner with some of my young stockbrokers. Somehow, though, we’d ended up in the Presidential Suite at the Helmsley Palace, where some very expensive hooker named Venice, with bee-stung lips and loamy loins, had tried using a candle to help me achieve an erection, which turned out to be a lost cause. And that was why I was running late now (about five and a half hours, to be exact), which is to say I was in deep shit, once again, with my loyal and loving second wife, Nadine, the righteously aspiring husband-beater.
You may have seen Nadine on TV; she was that sexy blond who tried to sell you Miller Lite beer during Monday Night Football,the one walking through the park with the Frisbee and the dog. She didn’t say much in the commercial, but no one seemed to care. It was her legs that got her the job; that and her ass, which was rounder than a Puerto Rican’s and firm enough to bounce a quarter on. Whatever the case, I would be feeling her righteous wrath soon enough.
I took a deep breath and tried to right myself. I was feeling pretty good now, so I grabbed hold of the stick, sending a signal to Captain SpongeBob SquarePants that I was ready to fly again. He looked a bit nervous, so I flashed him a warm, comrade-in-arms sort of smile and offered him a few kind words of encouragement through my voice-activated microphone. “Ooo gone get hazdiz duzy pay fuh dis, buzzy,” said I, who was trying to say, “You’re going to get hazardous duty pay for this, buddy.”
“Yeah, that’s great,” replied Captain Marc, releasing the controls to me. “Remind me to collect, if we should happen to make it home alive.” He shook his square head in resignation and amazement, then added, “And don’t forget to close your left eye before you start your descent. It’ll help with the double vision.”