Want a NOOK? Explore Now
When Jared Dillian joined Lehman Brothers in 2001, he fulfilled a life-long dream to make it on Wall Street—but he had no idea how close to the edge the job would take him.
Like Michael Lewis’s classic Liar’s Poker, Jared Dillian’s Street Freak takes readers behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture.
In this ultracompetitive Ivy League world where men would flip over each other’s ties to check out the labels (also known as the “Lehman Handshake”), Dillian was an outsider as an ex-military, working-class guy in a Men’s Wearhouse suit. But he was scrappy and determined; in interviews he told potential managers that, “Nobody can work harder than me. Nobody is willing to put in the hours I will put in. I am insane.” As it turned out, on Wall Street insanity is not an undesirable quality.
Dillian rose from green associate, checking IDs at the entrance to the trading floor in the paranoid days following 9/11, to become an integral part of Lehman’s culture in its final years as the firm’s head Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) trader. More than $1 trillion in wealth passed through his hands, but at the cost of an untold number of smashed telephones and tape dispensers. Over time, the exhilarating and explosively stressful job took its toll on him. The extreme highs and lows of the trading floor masked and exacerbated the symptoms of Dillian’s undiagnosed bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorders, leading to a downward spiral that eventually landed him in a psychiatric ward.
Dillian put his life back together, returning to work healthier than ever before, but Lehman itself had seemingly gone mad, having made outrageous bets on commercial real estate, and was quickly headed for self-destruction.
A raucous account of the final years of Lehman Brothers, from 9/11 at its World Financial Center offices through the firm’s bankruptcy, including vivid portraits of trading-floor culture, the financial meltdown, and the company’s ultimate collapse, Street Freak is a raw, visceral, and wholly original memoir of life inside the belly of the beast during the most tumultuous time in financial history. In his electrifying and fresh voice, Dillian takes readers on a wild ride through madness and back, both inside Lehman Brothers and himself.
A firsthand account of the high-speed, merciless world of the modern-day trader.
In Dillian's debut memoir, the author recounts his time as a Lehman Brothers' associate in the firm's final years. His experiences betting big with other people's money—as well as the psychological toll he incurred as a result—provides a scathing critique of selfish, scrambling men so driven to earn a buck that they lose all sight of the world beyond the tickers. Dillian's portrait of the mid-level Wall Street employee confirms all of the industry's clichés—that the stock market is, in fact, run by "men and boys," many of whom understand little more than a single mantra: "Make money, good.Lose money, bad." This simplistic approach causes Dillian to view Wall Street as a land of squandered talent, in which money-grubbing citizenry sacrificed their potential to play the numbers. "And here we all were," Dillian recounted," with our Ivy League educations and our social class and our pedigrees and our friends, and we were all in one big room on a daily basis pissing into the wind." Yet as a nontraditional student from the University of San Francisco, Dillian hardly fit the mold of the rich, Northeastern prep-schooler, and his outsider status served as a great attribute, offering him a clearer view of an industry both morally and economically bankrupt. However, the author often fails to bring readers fully into his colorful milieu.
A dramatic rendering of the financial crisis in which readers are often left on the outside of an insider's world.
Jared Dillian is the founder of the subscription-based, daily financial market report The Daily Dirtnap. He worked on the Pacific Options Exchange from 1999 to 2000, and was a trader for Lehman Brothers from 2001 to 2008, specializing in index arbitrage and ETF trading. Dillian is a graduate of the United States Coast Guard Academy and earned a Masters in Business Administration from the University of San Francisco. He lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Visit JaredDillian.com.
Prologue: Portrait Of A Trader: October 2, 2007 1
1 Spartacus: October 2, 2007 9
2 Drive: September 11, 2001 21
3 Vice Asshole: Fall 2001 29
4 Found Money: Winter 2002 51
5 Jay Knight: Winter 2002-Spring 2002 75
6 Primate Of The Year: Summer 2002-Fall 2002 101
7 Dark: Fall 2002-Winter 2003 131
8 T+1: Winter 2003-Summer 2004 149
9 Aggressive: Summer 2004-Fall 2004 169
10 Thank you Drivethru: Fall 2004-Winter 2005 185
11 Piker: Spring 2005-Fall 2005 209
12 Everything Is Not Going to be Ok: Winter 2006 237
13 I Remember: Winter 2006 261
14 Top Tick: Spring 2006-Winter 2007 281
15 Grace: Spring 2007-Winter 2008 297
16 Bad Trader: Winter 2007-Summer 2008 317
17 Those Bastards: Summer 2008-Fall 2008 333
Epilogue 355
Acknowledgments 357
Anonymous
Posted October 28, 2012
I didnt see you there
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted October 28, 2012
I am. Carries her to white result two. (Whitestar is my mate)
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 28, 2011
Incredibly well written and highly entertaining. One of the most honest and insightful accounts of Wall St ever written. Street Freak reads like fiction - from start to finish - and I¿d be shocked if it isn¿t made into a movie one day.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Overview
When Jared Dillian joined Lehman Brothers in 2001, he fulfilled a life-long dream to make it on Wall Street—but he had no idea how close to the edge the job would take him.
Like Michael Lewis’s classic Liar’s Poker, Jared Dillian’s Street Freak takes readers behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture.
In this ultracompetitive Ivy League world where men would flip over each ...