Thursday, March 12, 2009

Boiler Room (2000) - The Movie - Must-see for Traders

This is a must-see movie for all those stepping in to the world of trading and investing or dealing with a relationship manager at a broker firm. This movie will open your eyes so wide that you will never ever keep your eyes closed when talking to a representative of a broking firm.

It proves why trusting brokers, for stock tips and trades is the biggest risk one can take in the business. You can trade without technical analysis and still succeed but trusting a broker is the highest form of risk ever. As a senior writer with a leading analyst house said: All brokers around the world are boiler rooms.

The term
boiler room in business refers to a centre of criminal activity where financial products, particularly stock, are sold by telephone. The targets of organisations using boiler rooms are often subject to unfair, pressured, and dishonest sales tactics. Whilst some boiler rooms specialise in stock fraud, most sell penny stock or shares in companies which have yet to float on a stock exchange, misrepresenting it as more valuable than it actually is.

Boiler Room is a 2000 US drama, written and directed by Ben Younger, and starring Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel and Nia Long. Other characters in the film were played by Ben Affleck, Nicky Katt, Scott Caan, Tom Everett Scott (who also starred in That Thing You Do! with Ribisi), Ron Rifkin and Jamie Kennedy.

The film takes a look at the world of "boiler room" (seedy, dishonorable, and often fraudulent) brokerage firms. The film centers around college dropout Seth Davis (Ribisi), a budding underground casino owner from Queens, New York who gets a job at J.T. Marlin, a less-than-reputable brokerage firm. However at the time, Seth is totally unaware of the firm's criminal reputation. Davis' opposition to his disapproving federal judge father drives the plot as Davis goes deeper into the operation at J.T. Marlin than he'd like, learning how the firm scams its clients. The company is a chop shop brokerage firm that runs a "pump and dump", using its brokers to create artificial demand in the stock of defunct companies by cold calling investors and selling them shares at prices set by the brokerage firm, which include a large commission to the brokers (up to three dollars a share for a penny stock). When the firm is done pumping the stock, the investors then have no one to sell their shares to in the market, and the price of the stock plummets. As Seth learns more about the firm, he realizes he needs to get out. When the FBI confronts him, he agrees to help them bring down the firm. Although he feels bad about the many affluent investors (whales) that he lied to and scammed, he only tries to help one client who could not afford to be scammed in the first place.

Get the torrent here

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