Wall Street (1987)Bud Fox is a Wall Street stockbroker in early 1980′s New York with a strong desire to get to the top. Working for his firm during the day, he spends his spare time working an on angle with the high-powered, extremely successful (but ruthless and greedy) broker Gordon Gekko. Fox finally meets with Gekko, who takes the youth under his wing and explains his philosophy that “Greed is Good”. Taking the advice and working closely with Gekko, Fox soon finds himself swept into a world of “yuppies”, shady business deals, the “good life”, fast money, and fast women; something which is at odds with his family including his estranged father and the blue-collared way Fox was brought up.

Wall Street : Money Never Sleep (2010)“Money Never Sleeps” is a sequel to the 1987 popular movie “Wall Street”. It follows the actions of a Wall Street trader after his release from prison. The unique nature of the movie is in the fact that in this instance life imitates art, namely the original movie dealt with a fictional airline by the name of “Bluestar Airline” which was the company bankrupted by the fictional character of Michael Douglas. In reality a company named “Blue Star Jets” was in fact started in 2001 by real-life businessmen Ricky Sitomer and Todd Rome.

Boiler Room (2000)A young man has dropped out of Queens College but desperately wants to please his father, a federal judge who’s harsh with his son. At his father’s insistence, Seth Davis closes a casino he operates in his own house, mostly for college students. Thinking he’ll please dad, he takes a job in a small brokerage house, an hour from Manhattan, where trainees make cold calls to lists of well-paid men, and then apply high-pressure tactics to sell initial public offerings exclusive to the firm. He’s terrific at sales. Once training is over, the pay is phenomenal, and Seth wonders why. Curiosity leads him to ethical dilemmas, encounters with the Feds, and new territory with his father.

Trading Places (1983)Louis Winthorpe III is a successful Philadelphia commodity broker with mansion, manservant and girlfriend to match. Billy Ray Valentine is a hustling beggar. Winthorpe’s employers, the elderly Duke brothers, make a bet that by switching the lifestyle of the two Billy Ray will make good and their man will take to a life of crime. Suddenly Louis finds himself uncomprehendingly with no job, no home and only a new acquaintance, glamorous hooker Ophelia, prepared to help him. So at least in one way things could actually be worse.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)Times are tough in a New York real-estate office; the salesmen (Shelley Levene, Ricky Roma, Dave Moss, and George Aaronow) are given a strong incentive by Blake to succeed in a sales contest. The prizes? First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is the sack! There is no room for losers in this dramatically masculine world; only “closers” will get the good sales leads. There is a lot of pressure to succeed, so a robbery is committed which has unforeseen consequences for all the characters.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with $250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. Along the way, we watch Enron game California’s deregulated electricity market, get a free pass from Arthur Andersen (which okays the dubious mark-to-market accounting), use greed to manipulate banks and brokerages (Merrill Lynch fires the analyst who questions Enron’s rise), and hear from both Presidents Bush what great guys these are.

Rogue Trader (1999)Ambitious, wide-boy Nick Leeson is determined to rise in the world and be more than a simple bank clerk. When his employers, Barings Bank, offer him the opportunity to go to Jakarta to sort out a problem that nobody else wants, he seizes the opportunity with both hands. In Jakarta he meets and marries Lisa and together they go to Singapore when the bank offers him the job of setting up their future options trading operation. To save money the bank allows Nick to operate both the floor trading and the back office facilities and force him to employ cheap, unskilled staff. His first year of trading is a big success and he makes large profits for the bank even though he has illegally broken trading rules and secretly covered up losses. Given more freedom, even more money and continuing unchecked, Nick starts to make losses and again attempts to trade out of them but this time he comes unstuck as his illegal trading generates even bigger losses. After the death of his unborn child Nick completely loses control and gambles without restraint with other people’s money leading inevitably to a complete financial meltdown and the bankruptcy of the bank