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b"With Turney Duff, Author of\\xa0The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader\\u2019s Tale of Spectacular Excess, Contributor to\\xa0Showtime's\\xa0Billions and\\xa0CNBC\\u2019s The Filthy Rich Guide
Turney Duff, Survivor Of Wall Street Excess
If you\\u2019re looking for an eyewitness account of the wild rides, Dionysian excesses, trophy and status seeking, and the fortunes made and lost on Wall Street over the past couple of decades, Turney Duff might be your man. As a trader at major hedge funds, he participated in the decadent boom times and bloody busts and lived to tell the tale in his 2013 book The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader\\u2019s Tale of Spectacular Excess. \\xa0He also has consulted for the Showtime hit Billions, is a regular on CNBC\\u2019s The Filthy Rich Guide, is a frequent article contributor to many financial websites, a blogger on his site TurneyDuff.com, and has enjoyed a host of other accolades.\\xa0 He joins Steve to talk about the culture of \\u201cThe Street\\u201d and its seeming lack of all limits on ostentatious and hedonistic behavior during bull markets as well as his own story of getting in over his head with the temptations he found while raking in a high 6-figure salary.
Is The 2017 Stock Rally Feeding A Spend Big Culture On Wall Street?
The high-octane stock market rally that\\u2019s been in the driver\\u2019s seat since the November election has no doubt created a lot of wealth\\u2014at least on paper\\u2014 and 2017 bonuses for fund managers and traders are on track to rain a lot more money on \\u201cThe Street.\\u201d\\xa0 Steve asks Duff whether he\\u2019s currently seeing the kind of flashy, risk-taking exuberance that marked the go-go years of the late \\u201890s and mid-2000s, pre-crisis.\\xa0 Duff replies that he\\u2019s not seeing the same levels of decadence that he witnessed and joined in during those earlier bull runs.\\xa0 He does admit, however, that many of the men on Wall Street he knows seem to be breaking in the direction of \\u201cincreasing their deviant factor,\\u201d but he\\u2019s not convinced that \\u201cwe\\u2019re heading back to where it was.\\u201d\\xa0 The feedback he\\u2019s gotten from many friends and acquaintances about a recent article he wrote on the dawning of a new extravagance on Wall Street has been critical of his thesis, arguing that there\\u2019s no such thing.\\xa0 Nevertheless, Duff sees evidence that a lot of big money players are ramping up their spending on \\u201cextracurriculars,\\u201d even as many others are holding back and keeping a lower profile.
Conflict Of Money-Shaming Vs The Reemergence Of Wealth-Flaunting
Steve floats an explanation for the relative reticence of bankers and financial pros. After the financial market meltdown in 2008, the culture on Wall Street became much more conservative for a number of reasons: Obama\\u2019s election signaled that new regulations of the industry were on the way, bonuses were slashed, thousands were laid off, public sentiment was in a nasty mood towards the nation\\u2019s financiers, and countless people and companies had been burned by the stock and housing markets.\\xa0 Duff agrees, noting that when he asked his Wall Street contacts before the most recent market rally, as recently as October 2016, a majority were in savings mode and reluctant to use expense accounts.\\xa0 He believes the reason is that people have not felt financially safe since the crisis, even as markets have steadily overcome their losses.\\xa0 The trauma of seeing homes and stocks lose over 50% of their value has left a mark that will endure, even on younger generations who weren\\u2019t directly affected.\\xa0 Duff sees a fair amount of \\u201cwealth-shaming\\u201d going on by the public, a persistent hangover from the crisis that is perhaps concentrated in the notion of the 1% vs the 99%. \\xa0Steve finds the phrase \\u201cwealth-shaming\\u201d a helpful barometer of larger scale changes in the culture.\\xa0 Until recently, the very rich have kept their spending relatively in check and discrete, but Trump has arguably ushered a new cycle of unashamed,"