I finally was able to see Floored over the weekend and if I had to sum up the movie in one word it'd be "honest" and in many respects brutally honest regarding how some people were depicted. A lot of the characters and subjects didn't hold back their thoughts and feelings even though I felt it doesn't represent the majority of traders or ex-traders. The characters were certainly 'characters' and another reason why reality is much better than fiction because you couldn't invent some of them if they didn't already exist. It's definitely worth seeing the movie during the rest of the week in Chicago if possible and worth purchasing a DVD in June once it's available.
A few random thoughts on it:
- It was apparent that a lot of work and thought went into the movie and the finished product was worth the wait.
- The floor traders depicted were mostly outright traders who I believe in general are a dying breed, truly the end of a era as most traders now do correlations and spreads.
- It was unsaid that the difficulty w/moving to the screen is that it's incredibly competitive to get trades and as Charlie D. said, that's 75% of the battle. Often on the screen I'm reminded of a line in a movie I heard, "It's like prison sex, the kind you get you don't want and the kind you want you don't get." That is what it's like trying to get good trades on the screen and different from the floor.
- The movie did seem to have an perspective of depicting the downside of the move to the screen and didn't do good enough to show the benefits which have come from electronic trading. The pit was great back in the day but the market is much, much better to be on the screen in order to serve the function of price discovery.
- I've heard that the pit reporter Ron who is shown late in the movie died shortly after being laid off. I traded up by him when I first came into the pit and he was a nice guy, really sad situation how it all ended.
