Street Freak

Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers

Jared Dillian

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439181287
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

Like Michael Lewis’s classic Liar’s Poker, Jared Dillian’s Street Freak takes us behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture and offering a “candid look at the demise of a corporate behemoth” (Publishers Weekly).

In the ultracompetitive Ivy League world of Wall Street, Jared Dillian was an outsider as an ex-military, working-class guy in a Men’s Wearhouse suit. But he was scrappy and determined; in interviews he told potential managers that “Nobody can work harder than me. Nobody is willing to put in the hours I will put in. I am insane.” As it turned out, at Lehman Brothers insanity was not an undesirable quality.

Dillian rose from green associate, checking IDs at the entrance to the trading floor in the paranoid days following 9/11, to become an integral part of Lehman’s culture in its final years as the firm’s head Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) trader. More than $1 trillion in wealth passed through his hands, yet the extreme highs and lows of the trading floor masked and exacerbated the symptoms of Dillian’s undiagnosed bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders, leading to a downward spiral that nearly ended his life.

In his electrifying and fresh voice, Dillian takes readers on a wild ride through madness and back.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Prologue: Portrait of a Trader October 2, 2007
• Chapter 1: Spartacus October 2, 2007
• Chapter 2: Drive September 11, 2001
• Chapter 3: Vice Asshole Fall 2001
• Chapter 4: Found Money Winter 2002
• Chapter 5: Jay Knight Winter 2002–Spring 2002
• Chapter 6: Primate of the Year Summer 2002–Fall 2002
• Chapter 7: Dark Fall 2002–Winter 2003
• Chapter 8: T+1 Winter 2003–Summer 2004
• Chapter 9: Aggressive Summer 2004–Fall 2004
• Chapter 10: Thankyoudrivethru Fall 2004–Winter 2005
• Chapter 11: Piker Spring 2005–Fall 2005
• Chapter 12: Everything Is Not Going to Be OK Winter 2006
• Chapter 13: I Remember Winter 2006
• Chapter 14: Top Tick Spring 2006–Winter 2007
• Chapter 15: Grace Spring 2007–Winter 2008
• Chapter 16: Bad Trader Winter 2007–Summer 2008
• Chapter 17: Those Bastards Summer 2008–Fall 2008
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright