40 pages • 1 hour read
Liar’s Poker
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary and Study Guide
Overview
Originally published in 1989, Liar’s Poker is a nonfiction book that details author Michael Lewis’s experiences as a Wall Street bonds salesman in the late 1980s. Liar’s Poker is a betting game played with single dollar bills. In the book, bond traders at Salomon Brothers, an investment bank, play a much bigger betting game involving hundreds of millions of dollars, but the skills they require—daring, quick thinking, and ruthless bluffing—are basically the same as in the betting game.
Chapter 1 describes the extreme bravado of bond traders, who must juggle huge portfolios of securities while defending against office politics. Chapter 2 explains how author Michael Lewis, as a young and naive innocent, stumbles into a trainee position in the highly competitive and risky world of the Salomon bond department.
Chapters 3 and 4 explore the world of the Salomon trainee, who must endure months of droning lectures and the petty cruelties of teachers and trainees, then cultivate trading-floor managers in the hopes of landing a plum job instead of a mere clerk’s position.
Salomon is a leader in the securities business, and Chapters 5 through 7 explain how the company develops and markets the first mortgage bonds and makes a fortune during the Unlock all 40 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
Related Titles
By Michael Lewis
