Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… with greed in his heart. When he was just 23 he went to Wall Street to strike it rich as a stockbroker. He was taught by broker Mark Hanna that “your only responsibility is to put meat on the table,” and to forget about petty “ethics.”
Living… the sweet life. With the success of his company Stratton Oakmont, which dumps cheap pink-sheet stocks on unwitting individual investors, Jordan is filthy rich. At the age of 26 he made $49 million dollars, “which really pissed me off because it was only three shy of a million a week.” Money flows like water and Jordan starts living the most luxurious lifestyle his young mind can imagine. Helicopters, prostitutes, yachts – nothing is too showy for Jordan. And that’s exactly how he likes it.
Profession… CEO of Stratton Oakmont, a brokerage firm. Jordan does just about anything he can do to make money, and hires people who feel the same way. Jordan spends a lot of his time planning wild parties that even feature midget-tossing, and proudly proclaiming, “Was all this legal? Absolutely not!”
Interests… drinking, drinking and driving, Quaaludes, driving while on Quaaludes, and sex with prostitutes. Yes, it’s a sordid list.
Relationship Status… married. Jordan married his wife Teresa before he became extremely rich, and once the money starts coming in, his fidelity gets weaker and weaker. That’s especially true when Naomi Lapaglia, a lingerie model, comes into the picture.
Challenge… becoming the richest man in the world. Jordan is on the road to becoming wealthier than even the very rich people around him. He throws away money like burnt toast. The only thing standing in his way is the FBI. When Jordan starts making noise in the financial world, the FBI starts investigating him, which could end very, very badly for Jordan and his cohorts.
Personality… greedy, unapologetic, and charismatic. Jordan could sell you anything. And he challenges his friends and employees to learn from his expertise. He might tell them, “Sell me this pen,” just as a test of their skills. He seems to lack the moral compass that most people have, but still remains relatively loyal to his close friends even under pressure.
Get to Know him in...
-
A New York stockbroker refuses to cooperate in a large securities fraud case involving corruption on Wall Street, corporate banking world and mob infiltration.
-
Now a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids waiting at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called . . . THE WOLF OF WALL STREET In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess that no one could invent. Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, Stratton Oakmont turned microcap investing into a wickedly lucrative game as Belfort’s hyped-up, coked-out brokers browbeat clients into stock buys that were guaranteed to earn obscene profits—for the house. But an insatiable appetite for debauchery, questionable tactics, and a fateful partnership with a breakout shoe designer named Steve Madden would land Belfort on both sides of the law and into a harrowing darkness all his own. From the stormy relationship Belfort shared with his model-wife as they ran a madcap household that included two young children, a full-time staff of twenty-two, a pair of bodyguards, and hidden cameras everywhere—even as the SEC and FBI zeroed in on them—to the unbridled hedonism of his office life, here is the extraordinary story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down . . . Praise for The Wolf of Wall Street “Raw and frequently hilarious.”—The New York Times “A rollicking tale of [Jordan Belfort’s] rise to riches as head of the infamous boiler room Stratton Oakmont . . . proof that there are indeed second acts in American lives.”—Forbes “A cross between Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Scorsese’s GoodFellas . . . Belfort has the Midas touch.”—The Sunday Times (London) “Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment . . . a hell of a read.”—Kirkus Reviews From the Hardcover edition.
