Riding the Bull My Year in the Madness at Merrill Lynch

Riding the Bull My Year in the Madness at Merrill Lynch

After five years at the National Security Agency, Paul Stiles, age 29, finds himself disillusioned with government service and wondering if there isn’t a better way to make a life. A few months later, Stiles finds himself working as a trader for the world’s largest security firm, Merrill Lynch.

In the year that follows, Stiles sees the Mexican peso, the Orange County disaster, and the intense and brutal politics that dominates Merrill Lynch. Riding the Bull is a fast-paced, well-written personal account that traces Stiles’s short-lived career on Wall Street–from his first job interview to the day he was fired. During his short tenure as a bond trader, Stiles watches his life, marriage, and sense of well-being slowly crumble. If you ever thought that trading bonds might be a good way to make a living, Riding the Bull may convince you otherwise. You’ll also get a good overview of how the bond market works and why.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Thriving vs. Balance
I enjoyed the book, empathizing with the emotional struggles of being the low man on the totem pole lacking the clout to make positive changes while somehow your boss is an idiot making stupid managerial decisions based on a narrow self-interested view. At the same time, the final “dialogue” just bled liberal tree-hugger. At the same time, for an interesting read on the idea of America’s consumer culture, try reading “The Paradox of Choice” which I thought was just great.

Anywho, I did enjoy the part of the book talking about how one can lose oneself if there’s continual go-go-go without time for reflection, which seems to typidfy the Wall Street existence- and more and more the typical American existence. I think my dad said it best: America teaches you to thrive, but has nothing to say about balance.

5 Stars By the Horns
Every now and then you come across a really inspiring rags-to-riches tale of Wall Street, a story of a streetwise poor kid full of ambition, raw brains, and moxie, who risks it all, works like a demon, and makes big money in the financial jungle.

This is not one of them.

Paul Stiles, Harvard grad, smart dude, worked at the National Security Agency for five years: by about 1994, he’d decided “good enough for government work” wasn’t good enough for him. North of his little cottage near Annapolis, the trenches and bunkers of Manhattan, a great battle—fought with derivatives, and tranches of collateralized debt, and high-yield instruments of death and destruction—was being fought: a war with, potentially, far greater ramfications for the United States than all the post-Cold War subterfuge for pennies wielded in Washington DC.

So he did what all of us Wall Street hopefuls have done, once upon a time: he road the shuttle north, an interviewed like a banshee.

The first thing you’ll pick up in “Riding the Bull” is the verve of the writing: Stiles has a gift for words, for framing a scene, for setting up Manhattan in the mid-nineties, in the heat of the Bull Market, and Stiles—after the agony of inquisitorial, mercurial, stress-driven interviews masterminded by the newest lords of the manor, the calculus-fuelled quants—secured a plum role in emerging markets debt at Merrill Lynch, whose sigil and symbol—the rampant bull—was emblematic of that intoxicating, wild-eyed age.

Stiles, then, is an alien—or an ape, your choice—in this brave new world of bond trading, the Mexican sovereign crisis, the convergence of High Finance, High Octane, and Super-Duper international skullduggery.

Oh, with a little aside on the craziness of trying to settle down in Brooklyn, New York, 20th century, on a pittance of 100 grand a year. Sheesh.

Now: as I said, Stiles has a gimlet eye: of his work in the trenches at Merrill, as he was handed a nasty, thankless assignment as, effectively, a minister without portfolio, a trader without a country, a hapless Gringo amid the so-called Latin Mafia that ran the South America debt operations—how he tried, failed, tried again, and got sacked—trying to carve out his own little kingdom in the jungle of the Bull.

It’s fun reading. It’s scandalous, witty, engaging, capable of beoing devoured on a red-eye flight from Boston to LA, and consummately engaging.

Moralistic? Possibly. Stiles nails the pyschology of Manhattan, the city that grows up, not out. An island with skeletal coastal development? Go figure, in a place where the eyes look to the sky, not to the sea.

Some might complain that a one-year tour of duty on Wall Street hardly qualifies for the jeremiad that is “Riding the Bull”, but I disagree: in the wake of Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Adelphia, and countless other Wall Street turmoils, “Riding the Bull” is a merciless little piece of pungent journalism, a fly-on-the-wall in America’s boardrooms where the caviar is probably laced with salmonella and the Crystal is jacked up with arsenic.

Here be Dragons.

JSG

4 Stars Great read for reader interested in financial world
Although the author’s knowledge of Finance is fairly limited, the book’s focus on the political environment inside a Wall Street firm provides valuable insight to the person interested into entering this field.

Many people pursue a career in Wall St. simply to make money; and this was the intent of the author. Furthermore, the author’s background is quite similar to those who are entering the field some years after having finished college. Moving from the slow paced lifestyle to the hectic routine of a Wall st. analyst, the author is able to convey the difficult transition into Sales and Trading.

My only wish is that the author focused less on New York lifestyle and more on how a Wall St. firm works. It would have been nice to delve into the investment banking side and equity side. The author is limited by his lack of experience on the street and most of the writing is based on only a short-term experience. For those interested in pursuing a career in Bonds this might be a good read. Also, it is fairly long considering the author doesn’t detail too much information. So you’ve got to look for the subtle things to make some kind of perception.

This is definitely not a read for anyone experienced in Finance. Solely for those interested in getting into the field.

5 Stars Author’s Update
I wrote RIDING THE BULL to provide a first-hand account of the corrosive effect of extreme capitalism on human society. The book is a true story of a year I spent working at Merrill Lynch in New York City. It has now been seven years since I was hired by Merrill Lynch, and five since the book was published. In that time Merrill Lynch has paid half a billion dollars in fines both for its role in the Orange County bankruptcy and in the fraudulent promotion of dot-com stocks; the phony technology bubble has burst, just as the phony emerging markets bubble burst; and an unprecedented series of corporate scandals has rocked the American economy, causing a historic decline in the stock market that has erased an estimated $45 billion from the GDP. The magnitude of the problem has even led that champion of the Big Apple, the New York Times, to finally see the light: “If you have to choose the primary breeding ground for the various business misdeeds now consuming national attention, New York, I’m afraid, is the place…if infectious greed is the virus, New York is the center of the outbreak.” (City of Schemes, NYT Magazine, 10/6/02).
One is tempted at this point to issue a strong I-told-you-so. I won’t.

2 Stars Decent - but there are better books out there
Stiles made it a year in the derivatives business. What I found surprising was that he made into Merrill Lynch at all. Here was a guy who hasn’t even taken his series 7 and he’s wondering why he’s completely lost.

The lack of communication apparent in Merrill Lynch is unfortunate, but no different than other large finance companies (I can attest to that.) I found it hard to understand why the bureaucracy drove Stiles nuts considering his previous job was with the government. Rather than explain it as it was, I couldn’t help but think Stiles was looking for someone to point the finger at. It seemed to me the truth behind the corporate culture lies more along the lines of “we don’t care what you do as long as it makes money.” The “Latin Mafia” and the rest knew this and were playing the game using the cards they were dealt.

What I did enjoy were his escapades (or lack thereof) outside of work. Sorry New-Yorkers, even though I was born there, I cannot understand why anyone would choose to live there and this book reinforces the opinion. Stiles did a great job of conveying life in the Big Apple, from the sense of tension just getting to and from work, the rationalizations that come out when crime hits close to home, to a valid summary of why a dual income family making over $100K a year still has nothing to show for it. (Any Brooklynite reading this is probably thinking, “if you don’t like it… leave” which is exactly the point.)

Whereas “Liar’s Poker” is probably overly congratulatory, “Riding the Bull” is overly accusatory. I’m not sure if the author needed to sell his soul to continue working at Mother Merrill, but he should’ve realized he might have to make that decision before he took the job.

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