Turney Duff

I think that novels or memoirs about Wall Street are becoming the new "it" thing. However, Turney Duff's "The Buy Side" though at first enlightening about Wall Street pretty soon just turned into a seedy look at a drug addict.

As other reviewers have noted Mr. Duff writes very well. This was not a hard memoir to read and he does very well with explaining certain technical terms such as the buy side and what hedge funds are and how trading floors work.

What I particularly enjoyed was Mr. Duff's explanation about his background and then showing how he ended up working on Wall Street. His first few chapters where he is often confused and nervous that he doesn't know what he is doing were very funny and I liked how he talked about what his job entailed.

However, by the time we get to Mr. Duff's second job working at another investment firm (the Galleon Group) his life has descended into constant parties, drinking, and cocaine.

I ended up taking away two stars. I took away one star because as I previously stated though the memoir started off promising by the time it got to reading about Mr. Duff's addictions it became boring. Yeah who knew reading about cocaine, drinking, and watching porn could turn boring, but it did very fast.

The other star I took away is that though the novel at first held up quite well towards the end I had no idea what was going on, what Mr. Duff was talking about. He jumps back into describing his addiction and taking cocaine and then intertwines that with his former boss's Raj's (head of the Galleon Group) arrest. Mr. Duff never touches upon what really happened there and if Raj is currently

I was fascinated with his lifestyle and did want to know more about the Galleon Group since it does sound like something unsavory was going on there with insider trading, however, Mr. Duff just becomes vague about all of that. I don't know if it's because he is not allowed to discuss it or he was afraid of being sued. Whatever the reason, it would have been better for him to just leave it totally out of the story since by the time the end of the novel takes place he has not worked at the Galleon Group for I think several months/a year possibly so there was no good reason to bring it up. I ended up taking a quick Google search about the Galleon Group and I wish that Mr. Duff had focused more on what was going on at that hedge firm. It sounds like Mr. Duff may have been guilty of something as well though he quite quickly tells the reader that he had no idea what was going on and just followed orders.

Please note that I received this novel for free via the Amazon Vine Program.… (more)

A good read and a horrifying and true tale. The author manages to get hired as a sales assistant by Morgan Stanley and leverages this into several positions at hedge funds. At first, I thought that he would remain at Galleon until its boss went to jail, for insider trading, but he spends not much time there before he joins other funds as head trader. I knew some of these people although I never was big on hedge funds. My 35 years in Wall Street ended in 2002, before they had begun their rise to total dominance. He is right about Galleon and these are total crooks. I was a drunk for many years before I got into AA, and most of my career came later, so I can sympathize with the author and his travails. Much better than the other book which I read on traders which followed a bond syndicate guy at Citicorp named John LeFevre who never grew up and didn't have to.… (more)

A great read. Duff knows his stuff and I have no idea how these people did it. I was an analyst for 35 years on Wall Street but I never called on Galleon; we had a salesman who covered it and he wanted me to go see them but I never did, even though hedge funds provided most of the revenues of the street in the late 90s. My salesman went to Bear Stearns to cover the hedge funds and then when they were bought by JP Morgan, for the bank; He was a smart fellow and was interested in prime brokerage, so that the hedge fund growth made him a mint even though he never traded or started one.… (more)