The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Tale of Spectacular Excess

You might think it impossible to feel pity for a guy who has made millions, and squandered it all on fast toys, fast women, and cocaine. Nevertheless, by the last exhausting page of silently hoping for a redeeming outcome, an overwhelming sense of pity rushes forth. But, Turney Duff does not write this expose of Wall Street’s underbelly to elicit our pity.

Certainly it took courage to lay bare his own sins, as well as the sins of an entire financial sector. His description of the Street’s code of “omerta” reveals that Duff understands the consequences of selling this story to the public. Although officially a “robber baron” for life, now he can never go back to the Street. Broadcasting such secrets will never be forgiven by the Healthcare Mafia, nor the rest of brokerage business which still reels from the excesses that typify white collar corruption. Painful as it is, Duff shines a light into the darkness of his own wounded soul, as well as into the back alleys of the Street where high moral standards still collapse every day.