A Summary Of The Film Wolf Of Wall Street 

The Wolf of Wall Street starts by introducing the protagonist Jordan Belfort, the founder of Stratton Oakmont. During the introduction, greed is illustrated to be a dominant factor. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the role of Jordan Belfort and narrates throughout the film. He starts off by saying the year he made forty-nine million dollars at the age of twenty-six, it 'pissed' him off because it was three shy of a million a week. Through his narration, the audience is shown his massive estate, model wife, and him flying his own helicopter while under the influence; he makes a point that his Ferrari was not red but that it was white like Don Johnson's in Miami Vice. He continues by saying he owns six cars, three horses, two vacation homes, a private jet, and a 170-foot yacht. Furthermore, his proves that greed is the dominant factor by snorting cocaine with a rolled up hundred-dollar bill and tossing it in a garbage bin filled with other hundred-dollar bills. He says he was always a money driven person and that is magnified when he first started working at Rothschild. It is at Rothschild where he meets senior broker Mark Hannah and Hannah becomes Jordan's mentor as he shows him the in and outs of Wall Street for the six months he's there. He tells Jordan that money is the end all be all and that he has to make it his mission to put money in his pocket, and not necessarily the clients. On his first day at the job, Hannah takes Jordan to lunch and openly snorts cocaine. He says that it is a major key to his success and that Jordan should start using it because it will keep him sharp and aware and will make him dial his fingers faster. Throughout his six months, Jordan develops an addiction to cocaine and alcohol, and it is made clear that Jordan wants to attain and surpass the level of success that Hannah has. Unfortunately, at the end of the six months, the stock market crashed on October 19, 1987, the day historically known as Black Monday, and Jordan was left without a job.

The beginning of the film lets into Jordan's everyday lifestyle and how much money he made at his peak. It is a little later where we see how he achieved it through his job performance. For a stockbroker, you need to be able to buy stock and most importantly sell your clients on stock so in return they invest and the both of you will make money. Jordan was able to encompass a selling strategy known as 'pump and dump' and this can be thought of as a scheme because it is unethical. The strategy revolves around the broker selling stock on exaggerated or false information. In doing so, brokers would sell the same stock to as many people, increasing the price so when they reached the maximum limit of buyers, the firm dumps their shares for a huge profit. As a result, the stock price goes below the original selling price and creates huge losses for customers because they are unable to sell their shares in time. These types of stock are can be found on pink sheets and are referred to as penny stocks because they are valued less than one dollar. The reason Jordan was so inclined to sell these types of stock was because he got 50% commission. Now, when Jordan worked for Rothschild, he made 1% commission off blue-chip stocks that were sent out by the SEC. After Rothschild, Jordan started working for a brokerage firm out of a call center in a strip mall. This is where Jordan learned of making 50% commission off the penny stocks. Jordan was able to make $5,000 for selling $10,000 worth of stock based on a company called AEROTYNE IND. The company was run by two brothers making and selling microwaves out of their garage in Long Island, New York. Jordan completely changed their business when selling, and he named them AEROTYNE International. He told his buyer they are a cutting edge, high tech firm in the Midwest, awaiting imminent patent approval for radar detectors that had huge military and civilian applications. He also told his buyer that it is sitting at 10¢ a share and his analysts are indicating that they could go higher; and that he would make $40,000 on a $4,000 investment. As a result, Jordan sold $4,000 worth of AEROTYNE IND. stock and made $2,000 on that call alone; he later told his friend that he made $70,000 in one month. This ties in with another strategy which is creating urgency. Jordan says the stock is at 10¢ a share and his analysts are saying it will be going higher. Indicating his buyer that it is at a relatively low value. In a montage of scenes after this one, we see Jordan saying, “I have another buyer waiting”, “your sitting on a gold mine, these opportunities don’t last”, and “this is the last one left”. This is purposely done so the potential buyer acts on an impulse. Jordan tells his colleagues that when you first present your offer, a common response can be “I need to check with my wife”, “I’m not sure this is the right time for me” or “I am currently not looking to invest”. Urgency will help persuade them to invest and that brokers should ask questions like “how can I help you make money”?

Jordan decided it was his time to branch out so he and friend Donny Azoff co-founded Stratton Oakmont and recruited childhood friends to come work for them. His friends were middle class men, mostly working trade jobs who had side hustles such as drug dealing. They did not have any business education and the experience to buy and sell stock. So, Jordan wrote a script for them to follow, so they eliminated any conversation that would derail a sale. It was a brilliant strategy because it was a fast and efficient. Another key strategy Jordan use was to initially sell blue-chip stocks such as Disney, AT&T, IBM, etc. This was done so people felt comfortable dealing with Stratton Oakmont, so once they suckered them in they could start selling penny stock. It is quite amazing, knowing that this was all done originally out of an auto body shop and that they would eventually be selling on Wall Street.

Money is the key factor in the Wolf of Wall Street, it symbolizes greed in the film. Jordan even refers to it as being a powerful drug, which is his favourite. Realistically, there is no need to own the luxuries that he does regardless of one's wealth. The only purpose for it is to continuously feed his ego and create a perception about himself so his employees and the public think of him as a 'God'. He divorced his wife and married a supermodel named Naomi, moved out of his apartment and transitioned into a mansion and split time from there and his penthouse where again he would cheat on his new wife with escorts. He hosted parties with well over 100 people, of who the majority were employees and the same employees he would never socialize with just for the purpose of everyone witnessing his power, popularity, and immense fortune. 

Greed fueled Jordan, so much so that he set out to own Wall Street, where in fact for a period of time he did; but like the many before him and after him, you cannot own Wall Street without implicating yourself, and that is what greed did to him. Jordan opened a Swiss bank account where he got his friend Brad along with his wife and her family to smuggle money into Switzerland and put it under his wife Naomi's aunt's name so it could not be traced back to him. It worked for a short period until his banker was arrested while in the United States and gave all the information on Jordan to the FBI. In hopes of reducing his sentence, Jordan agrees to wear a wire to divulge information about his colleagues and all of Stratton Oakmont's operations. He fails in doing so by passing a note to Donnie about the wire, later not knowing that Donnie has told the FBI about the note, and Jordan and Stratton Oakmont were shut down. Jordan pleaded guilty to securities fraud and money laundering and was sentenced to four years in prison.