Sell me this pen

This man is known for being part of one of the biggest business fraud scandals of all time and was once known by some as the “Wolf of Wall Street”. His name is Jordan Belfort and he started the stock brokerage company Stratton Oakmont, a penny stock company he ran in the 1990’s. This company at one point employed over 1,000 brokers; well this was before the company was shut down by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Belfort was arrested by the FBI in 1998.Anyone whose seen Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street knows the scene. In the last few moments of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio, portraying Jordan Belfort – the 1990s penny stock broker, who went to prison on charges of fraud and stock market manipulation for orchestrating a massive pump and dump scheme at his New York firm Stratton Oakmont – asks a room full of salesmen at a seminar to sell him a pen. Mr. DiCaprio hands a pen to one salesman, who begins describing it: “It’s an amazing pen...” Not satisfied, Mr. DiCaprio takes the pen from the salesman, hands it to another and repeats the challenge. Again, the salesman describes the pen’s finer features and Mr. DiCaprio moves on. So what is the correct response? Earlier in the film, Mr. Belfort is portrayed giving the same challenge to friends. Sitting in a diner, one man takes the pen and tells Mr. DiCaprio, as Mr. Belfort, to write his name down. Having just handed over his pen, Mr. DiCaprio replies that he doesn’t have a pen. Exactly, the man replies, “Supply and demand.”

Jordan’s Belford fraud plan

• Pump and dump : “Pump-and-dump” schemes involve the touting of a company’s stock (typically small, so-called “microcap” companies) through false and misleading statements to the marketplace. Often the promoters will claim to have “inside” information about an impending development or to use an “infallible” combination of economic and stock market data to pick stocks. In reality, they may be company insiders or paid promoters who stand to gain by selling their shares after the stock price is “pumped” up by the buying frenzy they create. Once these fraudsters “dump” their shares and stop hyping the stock, the price typically falls, and investors lose their money.
  
  

• Rathole : Rathole was a Stratton code word for a nominee, a person who owned shares of stock on paper but was nothing more than a front man. There was nothing inherently illegal about being a nominee, as long as the appropriate taxes were paid and nominee arrangement didn't violate any security laws. But, as Jordan himself says in The Wolf of Wall Street, "But the way we were using nominees-to secretly buy large blocks of Stratton new issues-violated so many security laws that the SEC was trying to invent new ones to stop us." . "Of course, we weren't the only ones on Wall Street taking advantage of this; in fact,everyone was. It was just that we were doing it with a bit more panache-and brazenness"

All in all, without a doubt we can easily criticise such an individual but can we really criticise him? I mean for sure a person earning such a massive pay check is not down to earth and it is not respectful and ethical to others but if we leave the details aside and actually think what the heck he was thinking about I think we are talking about a special individual in the aspect of trading. Make no mistake I do not support his actions but really are we in a position to question his potentials? The probable answer is no and before you even realise this guy has sold you a pen!