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Money At The Movies · Cash Lads

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Cash Lads.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Paul Malloy from BoxcoverTax.ie and this is Marcus Doyle from Clear Financial.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: We're here to take the mystery out of money and finance with some history, some stories, and plenty of humor too.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are you getting on today, Marcus?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm good.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Good?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Today, folks, we're going to be talking about I mean my my my my fiance, uh, Grone Humphries is uh work is works for the Dublin International Film Festival, Diff, and uh she does all our movie programming at home because uh I've got terrible taste in films, as most of my friends will tell you.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: No way.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So today, in honor of Gronia, we're going to talk about movies and money.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the uh we have a number of films that we're going to talk a bit about today that have been uh in the movies, quite well-known ones, and have have been have a kind of had a financial or or money aspect.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we we really have to start with Wall Street.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, we're really short of my age now.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in Wall Street, um a uh uh a titan uh of of the industry, uh Gordon Gecko, yeah, uh played by Michael Douglas, um essentially corrupts, uh turns uh Charlie Sheen's character Bud Fox to the dark to the dark side of the force.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um but there's a very famous quote which we must must must must give you.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um while Gecko is he's now he's bought into a company called Tell Dar Paper that's struggling a bit, and he says in his speech, he says greed, or for lack of a better word, is good.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Greed is right, greed works, greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he's essentially saying that self-interest uh drives all progress, which is what Adam Smith said.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: He talked about the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, all those people who provide you with the products you want at the prices you need, not out of trying to help you, but because it's in their interest.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, at the um Oliver Stone made uh Wall Street and he he was trying to paint Gecko as this you know evil character, and the greed speech was like the essence of evil, and yet all these MBAs, you know, in America they loved them, like you know.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: So so that's what it was, but it the slick back hair and everything, remember?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: And they were the slick absolutely yeah, yeah, the old boys' club have a lot of gel going on there.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but one of the big things about the film is this whole idea, and we'll come come back to it in some of the other movies, of insider trading, you know, of being aware of something that's not publicly available, but it if if if if it was, it would would change the price of the company.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um Charlie Sheen's character was following.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Charlie Sheen's uh character.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's his father at the beginning.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is how he got it, got got in with Gecko.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: His father was um uh Martin Sheen.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: His dad was actually his dad's actually his dad.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, people kind of forget that he works for an airline that had kind of a legal issue hanging over them that that Martin Sheen told us, so that well, that's kind of behind us now.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: His dad was uh was he head of the the uh the uh his dad was not he wasn't involved in that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: More kind of repairs repairing the airlines.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, he was, but wasn't he involved in a kind of he was still an organization for the employees?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: Was he oh yeah, yeah.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: Was he part of the trade union?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was the trade union rep or something like that, wasn't that it?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So so this suddenly, you know, Gecko realizes that he's just been given information that uh gives him an edge.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so they start they start working, uh, they start working together.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: But that's yeah, that's one it it is a good movie, folks.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't seen it, there's a great cast, and um it's pretty timeless because you know ultimately the temptation to exploit uh insider information will always be there, and it's always it's always a risk.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Charlie Sheen's character remember was following people around.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: He was following, yeah, one of Gecko's uh rivals, yeah, and he knew what he was doing, and suddenly he realized what the rival uh was an English chap, I think, in the film.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I imagine he knew what he knew what he was up to, and uh you know Gecko was able to outside him on the stock and and really, really hurt him, you know.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: Did he did he bring Charlie Sheen's character to a meeting with the other guy and goes your man recognized him and he's obviously following him the whole time?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's really good.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's really good.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the next one we we might touch on is a film called Trading Places, uh starring Dan Aykroyd and and and Eddie Murphy.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very much a comedy.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great film, it's very much a comedy.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: But essentially, Dan Aykroyd is playing a guy called Lewis Winthorpe the Third, and like he's he's he's he's grown up from good stock, went to good school, went to a top university, top university, um working now uh in the Chicago Board of Trade uh for the Dukes, Randolph and Mortimer Duke.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And one day the two brothers, and these these guys are almost like something from you know the Muppets.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I actually like the two lads at the book, the two lads at the top, yeah.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they said, you know, one of them says, Oh, you could put a guy like this anywhere and he'd succeed, you know.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: But and uh the other brother goes, Well, we could take some from the street, show him what to do, and he'll he'll be so they had this bet that they can overturn uh Lewis Winthorpe and bring it who was played by Dan Aykroyd and replace him by just you know a common, common bum thief, uh by Eddie Murphy.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, they deliberately ruin uh and Dan Aykroyd's life.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: He just literally ends up on the street.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's a a scene where on Christmas Day, you know, he's dressed in a Santa Claus suit, it's a piss and rain.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then a dog just takes a leak on him and he tries to shoot himself, but there's no bullets in the gun.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, he he really hits rock bottom, doesn't he?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so eventually I think it's it's Eddie Murphy who's who they brought in from nowhere and has done incredibly well for them.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly Eddie Murphy hears the two lads in the bathroom talking about the bet.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the bet that that this bet that has just upended two lives was for one dollar.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: That was the bet.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So what the dukes who are you know unconscionably bad people in the film, um, they're betting on the future price of orange juice.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: So frozen orange juice is a commodity, it's it's it's uh heavily, heavily traded, and its price, um, like a lot of uh I suppose agricultural products, um, if the harvest has been good, if the weather has been good, and there's loads of oranges and loads of supply, then actually the price will be lower because the price there's such there's such a high volume of uh of supply available.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas on the other hand, if the weather's been frosty and there hasn't been as many oranges grown, the price will go up because the supply is low.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this whole thing where they they basically, you know, the two evil brothers have bought the crop report, they basically bribed the guy that's that's involved in it, Mr.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Beaks.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the the the guys Murphy and uh Actroyd get together and they steal it and they replace it with a fake report.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the fake report says the weather's been terrible, but the reality is the weather's been brilliant, and the final scene it's a good 15-20 minutes on on the floor of what you would imagine.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's trading.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite exciting on the floor with the trading, yeah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Where everyone realizes that the two old the dukes have have had borrowed massively to buy, you know, as much orange as juice as they can, and then the report, the real report comes out, the weather has actually been brilliant.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: The price, but again, we're back to insider information, we're back to lack of ethics.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's very funny.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is a very good film.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't seen it, it's very funny.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the next one is uh I don't know if it's as well known, but uh it's called Road Trader.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I've never seen it, but obviously no it's the Nick Leeson story as well.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's about a guy called Nick Leeson, um, and he worked for Bering's Bank.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he was Nick Leeson was from he was from Watford.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: He was not unlike Winthorpe or Dan Ackroyd's character, he didn't go to the best of schools, but he was very smart and he was prepared to work hard.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: They sent him out to Indonesia to fix up a complete mess, and he did so, and so he got a promotion to manage their trading in Singapore.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And his job was essentially to um you know find f find customers and execute those trades.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the customer says, I want to buy 100,000 euros worth of Microsoft stock.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they did.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And in the film, a member of his staff makes a mistake.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: She buys, she says she buys and she should have sold, she took the order down wrong.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she she the client in in insists she pays for it, and they create what's known as the 5.8s account.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the account will have to have five digits, and eight is a f is a lucky number in China.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of a lot of people in in in uh Singapore would be ethnically Chinese.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um this kind of uh account is set up, and after a while they get out of Dodge, close the account, and they're like, Oh thank God, you know, we got out of it, but he finds himself in trouble again, and he's constantly betting that the Japanese, the Nikkei uh exchange, and this is the early 90s, will will surely come back.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: It'll surely come back at some point because it was always so high.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: But this is just a time when Japan's descent is just down, down, down, and it never turns.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned the the scene in the bathroom, you know, beforehand.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can't remember the figures, but I've lost 400 million ridiculous in one day.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think he lost something like 800 million.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh back when that used to be a lot of money.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: And uh that's pocket change for you.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, again, what was what's interesting is he this this big position he built up, he was telling London who were providing him with money that this was just the clients were just effectively kind of borrowing the money, but wanted to do the trade and he just needed the money, but he needed the money because his losses were just not turning around.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he was very charismatic, he was very well regarded in the bank.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: There were audits that should have happened and didn't, and if they had happened, he would have been he would have been found out.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think one day that he was he was nearly out of trouble, and there was an earthquake in Japan back then as well.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Poor Japan had a bad time in the 90s.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so so yeah, so that's um that's rogue trader.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: The next one is um margin call and um margin call is about you know what happens when a a company gets really bad news or realizes that it's it's in trouble.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't remember margin call actually yeah, so it was based on it was based on the 2008 crash, and it I think it all happens in one day where essentially the management, the senior management, are provided with the picture on how bad their position is on the housing, the mortgage-backed securities and things like that.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: How bad is it?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and and they're just they cannot believe how bad it is.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: They just can't believe how bad it is.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And their dilemma is do we sell these assets and deal with the consequences afterwards, where people are like, oh, you knew you must have known they were bad.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: These are terrible, terrible things, or they do the honorable thing and just you know alert the exchange that they have these bad assets.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I can't remember.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I um so if you haven't seen it, I'm not giving away the the the end because I just forget, but I think I think they decided to sell them, you know.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's just it was made a few years.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jeremy Irons is in it, it's very, very good.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that was um that was margin call.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um the big short came out in 2015.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is with Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Brad Pitt is in it as well.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Brad Pitt and Steve Corell, who would often play kind of humorous kind of roles, um, like The Office and um I was in all the comedy films, uh 40 year old verge and all them.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: But he's he's very good at that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: But he he very much plays a uh what you would call, I guess a kind of a fairly honourable or you know, moral guy uh on Wall Street when there's not too many.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a number of people, there's effectively three groups of characters who who essentially, firstly, with um Michael Bury, who's still very active, uh and is very much believing Michael Burry believes that the AI is completely overvalued.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Christian Bale's character realizes that all of these mortgages, he starts reading these these kind of mortgage reports, you know, which have literally thousands of mortgages.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody reads them.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like nobody reads them.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And he starts going, going, this guy's 90 days behind, 65 days behind, 80 days behind, and he suddenly realizes all of these people have already fallen behind.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the interest rate in a mortgage is low.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're called teaser rates, and they start low when they get big.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, as soon as those teaser rates are over, if they're in trouble now, imagine how much trouble they'll be in.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So he uh he can just see it, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: He can see that the disaster the housing was going to be.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the the Steve Correll character, he's he's with uh a small trading team, and they accidentally find out uh they bring Ryan Gosling in to for a report, they accidentally find out how much trouble the the housing sector is in.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they they not quite believe in Ryan Gosling because his character is so so unpleasant.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: They go off to um they go to Florida.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: They go to Florida, there's a couple of lads are sent out, and they realize that you know they I think they meet a stripper who's got six properties.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think yeah, that's in the film, yeah.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and they're all talking about you know very it's very similar to Ireland, people that just well, not strippers having properties, but people having all these properties all over Ireland and in Bulgarian places, yeah.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and so then they're like you're not worried if the prices go down.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and she goes, Well, I'll just refinance.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And refinancing is a bit like a previous episode we were talking about QE quantitative easing, where you just you just throw money at the problem.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and they go, Well, what if you can't refinance?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so all of our governments every year have to refinance borrowings for the bonds we issue.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can't refinance, you're you're broke.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if enough of these people go broke, uh there's a huge problem.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's a few other guys get involved, two young lads get involved with Brad Pitt, and so the these three groups of people, the film is all based around what they're seeing um in the housing market, you know, and uh yeah, and Crystal Bates character takes out the this big insurance policy that they all laughed at him.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: He yeah, so he basically wants to create a bond that would, you know, uh sell off, would do well in the event of the housing market doing badly, he would do really, really well.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And initially his investors have absolutely gone mad because they've said Alan Greenspan, who at that time was literally financial god, literally financial god, he was saying that all housing problems were all uh local and uncorrelated, which means they're not connected.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: So he he was saying there wasn't there's not going to be a big housing problem, but of course they were utterly um connected, and all these products has been.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a fantastic scene where they go and meet one lady in the ratings agencies, I think she's with with Moody's or standards and poor.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what you find out is that what's going on is imagine paying the referee for your results before a football match.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that I'll yeah, I want I I want I want four goals, I want four settings off and five yellow cards, please, and I'll give you that much.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now a six-year-old would laugh at that.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of that, but this is kind of what happened that these rating agencies basically um and the lady admits it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, if we don't give them the rating they want, they'll just go down the street.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it's a fantastic film, it does explain 2008 very, very well.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's not one you can see one time, you've got it all, I don't think.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you might need to do that.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot going on in the film.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot going on, but that was um the big short and um super film.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then just to to kind of finish up on a kind of a lighter one is the uh The Wolf of Wall Street.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, that's fantastic.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: With with Jordan Belfort, uh you know, Leo DiCaprio playing Jordan Belfort, and apparently the two of them met, uh Leo and himself got on very, very well.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, no, I do have a pal in this sector, and he had nothing but contempt for Jordan Belfort.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, what was Belfort doing?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the first thing is Belfort was a very, very smart guy, again, a bit like Nick Gleason, not from a very well uh I think he could have been from New Jersey or somewhere like that.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he wasn't from a big he didn't come from money or he used to sell ice cream at on beaches and stuff like that.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: People sitting on the beach, really, really warm, some lads walking around with ice creams.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Oh y'all have one of them.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So he was just a born, born salesperson.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And um he he got his job, his start on Wall Street just before the the crash in 1987.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The 1987 uh Wall Street.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he is, and anyway, because of the timing, he's very, very unfortunate.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and Wall Street don't uh they don't do kind of uh empathy very well.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So he's just on the street almost two days after starting like um and he gets a job in a small brokerage that specializes in selling small company stocks to small investors, penny stocks, penny stocks is what they're called.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, these companies they they are listed, so they are there is a market for them, just they're just not very well known.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we were talking about earlier, Marcus, that um, you know, some of them it's just it's just some guys, some guys shed in the back of his garden.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's one of the jokes that one of them he's selling us, and your man's making it as a shed in the back of garden.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: I can't believe what they would make.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: But Belford, what his great skill was making these investments sounds amazing, making them sound like something you can't miss out, only suckers wouldn't go for this.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And because he's so confident and so impressive and so knowledgeable that um people buy, you know, investors buy buy and he builds and builds, and suddenly he's literally got this big office on Wall Street, and all his traders are essentially just salespeople, they're not they've no real financial background.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the whole thing of the video.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: You brought people in you who who could sell rather than actually who knew about shit.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: They were there, they were there to sell, and it's fair to say that there's a lot of excess.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which leave leave it at that.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think we can mention all the well, that's too much from the films off the excess.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: We really can't, but um what is hit their strategy was what's known as pump and dump.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: So with pump and dump, the insiders acquire the shares, uh, salespeople go out there aggressively promote them, and Belford's team were aggressive salespeople, very pushy.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: The customers buy them, the prices go up, and the insiders go, Well, we have always known these shares are rubbish.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: So now we'll sell when the price is high, and then the people, the customers were were uh they'll take it, were taken.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the film really shows an intense contempt for their customers.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And their customers were not millionaire, you know, billion billion euro investors, they were small investors, you know, and they didn't care.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it it it showed one of the worst sides of Wall Street, and of course, Jet Jordan Belfort did did go to jail, he did go to jail.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, um hope you enjoyed that and and that you might check out some of those some of those movies.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're all good in their own way.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you really want a good giggle, I would certainly recommend trying to get the money.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: Paul Mloy gets commissioned on all the films you can watch.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm I I'm on a kickback.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks, Marcus, for flushing me out.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm on to you, Meloy.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on to you.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: We'll leave it there for today, folks.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks very much, Marcus.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Cheers, bye.