Peter Sullivan: Yes.
John Tuld: I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear - a - thing. Just... silence.
Great movie though
Margin call is by far the best movie about the financial crisis of 2008 that I've ever seen. I was working in the biz at that time and it all just rang so true. 7 AM pre-market meetings, lots of folks crunching data, Wall Street people actually living in Brooklyn and so much more.
Sadly, the movie is so esoteric that it never had a mainstream success. Such a shame because it had great actors and a fantastic script.
You bet they do. But like all things the more money you have the better you get treated.
Small retail investor, your margin call is likely automatic with assets sold without your input to take the money.
large hedge fund. Tables of lawyers deciding how much you have to put up, at what time, and what can you move out of that bank before you pay.
Never read the book (http://www.knightmareonwallstreet.com/) but watched it happen in real time from the trade desk at a different firm.
You could also say it happens to small banks. If you fail some sort of FDIC testing, you're classified as at-risk and they force you to sell to a larger bank so as not to risk depositor funds.
I strongly recommend that movie.
That whole movie is so shallow when you think about it for more than 2 seconds.
That's you assuming stuff, not me. And I don't think there's any evidence for it in the movie - it's portrayed as a surprise to everyone involved.
Edit: actually wasn’t Sorkin but whatever
The movie also makes clear multiple times that the only people who were surprised by what was going on were the little guys – risk analysts and middle management. People at the top got the news and were simply like "ok guess it's finally happening".
If you ask around people who do this stuff for a living, all of them will tell you that out of the dozens of movies about the financial crisis, Margin Call was conceptually the closest one to how things actually work in the industry (obviously disregarding the Hollywood-esque dialog and characters).