Are you a stock market investor and a movie buff too?
This article is bound to excite you as it talks about the best movies on stock market which every investor should watch.
Scam 1992 an OTT based web series on the infamous 1992 stock market scam perpetuated by Harshad Mehta was a big hit when it was released a few months back. Another movie inspired by the same topic titled The Big Bull starring Abhishek Bachan is slated for release on OTT soon.
Real-life stories often inspire movies. But sometimes it is the other way around too when people are inspired by movies.
Let\’s take a detailed look at some of the best movies on stock market.
The Big Short
Year of release -2015
Directed by Adam McKay, The Big Short is a drama film based on 2010 the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis.
The film is all about three separate stories running parallel and loosely connected by their actions in the years preceding the 2007 sub-prime crisis and the associated market crash.
Two years before the actual crisis, fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovers that the housing market in America is extremely unstable, based on high-risk subprime loans. Believing that the market\’s collapse is imminent in the coming years, he proceeds to bet against the housing market with the banks.
The film which also stars Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt won several awards and is considered as one of the best movies on the stock market.
The Wolf of the Wall Street
Year of release -2013
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, The Wolf of the Wall Street is based on the real-life story of Jordan Belfort and his extraordinary rise from a penny stockbroker to one of the biggest names in American stock markets and his ultimate fall.
Termed as one of the best movies on the stock market, this movie is a must-watch for all stock market aficionados.
The Wall Street
Year of release -1987
Starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen in lead roles, The Wall Street showcases the story of a young and impatient stockbroker Bud Fox (C. Sheen), who teams up with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider.
The film exposes the harsh reality of stock markets and how insider trading can take unsuspecting retail investors for a ride.
Boiler Room
Year of release -2000
The plot of the movie Boiler Room revolves around a 19-year-old with high ambitions, Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi ) who takes up a job with a fraudulent brokerage firm that runs a \”pump and dump\” scheme to create artificial demand in stocks of worthless companies.
The movie offers a valuable lesson as why to investors should invest only in good stocks rather than ‘hot’ or trending stocks.
Rogue Trader
Year of release -1999
Based on a true story, the plot of the movie Rogue Trader revolves around Nick Leeson (Ewan McGregor), a young British man working at Barings, a major investment bank. As the general manager of the trading floor, Leeson takes advantage of the thriving Asian market to make risky trades and ends up making huge losses with the bank\’s money to the tune of £800 million and ultimately driving Barings Bank to bankruptcy.
Chasing Madoff
Year of release -2011
Written and directed by Jeff Prosserman, Chasing Madoff is a documentary film based on the book by Harry Markopolos.
The film showcases how Harry Markopolos and his associates spent several years trying to get the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other agencies to act on their investigative proof of Bernie Madoff\’s Ponzi scheme. According to estimates Bernie Madoff had scammed investors for an estimated $18 billion.
The China Hustle
Year of release -2017
The China Hustle is a finance documentary that investigates how innocent American investors were cheated using the idea of making big money by investing in China’s growth story by 2nd and 3rd tier investment firms at Wall Street from 2008 to 2016. As a part of it, many small Chinese companies with very low valuations did reverse mergers with defunct American companies to list on the New York stock exchange. To create massive hype these investment firms used celebrities at investment conferences.
Post investigations by American agencies, most of the dubious firms were de-listed from the New York stock exchange and as a result of which investors lost billions of dollars.
Margin Call
Year of release -2011
Directed by J. C. Chandor, Margin Call is a financial thriller film set over 24 hours at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. The movie revolves around the actions taken by a group of employees during the subsequent financial collapse and stars Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, and Demi Moore in lead roles.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Year of release -2011
The film is a sequel to the hit 80’s movie Wall Street and revolves around the 2008 financial crisis. Its plot centers around a reformed Gordon Gekko, played by Micheal Douglas, who teams up with his future son-in-law, a stockbroker, when he spots an opportunity to take down an enemy at the Wall Street and regain his lost fortunes.
Baazaar
Year of release – 2018
Directed by Gauravv K Chawla Bazaar is a financial thriller that revolves around the concepts of hostile takeovers, excessive greed in the stock market, insider trading, and corruption. Lead roles in the movie are played by Saif Ali Khan, Rohan Mehra, and Radhika Apte.
Key lessons from the best movies on stock market
Greed and resorting to unscrupulous methods for making quick money in the market never pays. While some of the big fish may manage to get away with it sometimes, mostly it is the retail investors who are the receiving end. Rather than looking at the stock market with a get-rich-quick scheme perspective, one should always invest wisely in good companies for long term.
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