My honey and I watched the movie, Wall Street, last Thursday night. I suspected it would reveal more about trading, ETFs and Funds. But it brought a different picture to mind's eye.
Directed by Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas leads the story as Gordon Gekko, which sure sounds like a name a master manipulator would have. He just gets out of prison after an insider trading scandal. As it happened, it was a fitting name for this character as he stops at nothing to reclaim his rightful place at the top of the Wall Street power ladder. But I thought the trader (Gekko's son-in-law to be, Jacob (Jake), played by Shia LaBeouf) was a real revealing and watchable character.
I had not seen a movie with LaBeouf before, so this was a treat for me.
The movie focused on Gekko's chess-like moves to regain his reputation on Wall Street, but the back story was somewhat soft. Bits and pieces portrayed Gekko as trying to regain relationship with his estranged daughter. This part showed Gekko's character like a thread weaving through a tattered quilt going this way and that. Although the final few scenes in the film summed it up, it felt more like a change in character that hadn't been completely fleshed out. No matter.
I didn't believe the daughter's anger meaning the reason why she rejected Gekko, her dad, but who knows, life is funny like that. It could be real life true, but in this movie, it was a stretch. It just didn't ring true for me.
What was intriguing was the spider web surrounding the traders, and how trading was done with back stabbing, rumor untruths and heated remarks phrased with hidden meanings and smirks. It felt like a box of bees humming around inside a glass gage trying to sting each other. I have to wonder if this is more true and fiction.
There was really no tips about investing per se, except to scare the living begebees out of a newbie investor such as me and my honey. [Well, me anyway] It's pretty easy to see that if you only have a few thousand to invest, you are but a pawn in the big chess game of trading. But if you have a hundred million dollars, well, then you can parlay that bit of wealth into billions.
It may or may not be so, but it feels true. It feels like the new American Dream that Suze Orman speaks of. It feels as if you fail to have a million dollars by the time you reach retirement, you have little to no chance of retiring with grace. You are basically stuck… stuck to live in abject poverty in your golden years. Huh? What is golden about this matter of fact?