Animal Spirits Podcast - A Random Watch Down Wall Street: Trading Places

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

We re-watched the 1980s finance classic Trading Places with Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis to discuss how markets have changed since then, the most iconic scenes, and how well this movie aged. Find complete shownotes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Like us on Facebook And feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. Michael Battenick and Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holt's wealth management. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritt Holt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Clients of Rithold's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. On today's A Random Watchdown Wall Street, Ben and I will be talking about trading places,

a movie that came out in 1983. I was not born yet. Ben, how old were you in 1983? I was born in 81, so I must have been two when this came out. Okay, and did you see it in the theaters? Yeah, I went by myself, kind of like you. This is the kind of movie that when you're younger, you see it on USA. Or one of those channels and you watch it.

Or like TNT, TBS. Bits and Pieces. It's definitely a different movie going back and watching it now without some of the stuff taken out, which we can get into. You know, I hadn't seen this movie ever, believe it or not. Obviously, have heard a lot about it. It's a part of American culture, specifically certainly finance. This is one of finance Twitter's favorite ones. It scored pretty well.

Well, so I watched it for the first time, probably five years. ago. And I think I had an expectations mismatch. And the first time I saw it, I really didn't love it. I certainly didn't understand the adoration for the movie. But that's because I was very late to the party. So if you were, whatever, 50, if you were a real person when this came out and you saw it when it came out, I totally get how this is an iconic. It's got a nostalgia premium. Hold on. Yeah, I totally get it. And I will say upon a second viewing I liked it way better, so my first instincts were totally wrong. Again, I think because of an expectation mismatch. So I understand why this is a classic. I'm here for it. I really liked it.

It scored pretty well. The tomato meter gives it 87%. That's for the critics. The audience gave it 84% of Rotten Tomatoes. IMDB headed at 7.5 out of 10. I'd probably come somewhere on that range, 7 out of 10 maybe. I'm an 8. I'm an 8. Solidate at least. Okay. Here's a few things that were kind of funny to me. And I think this is in most 80s movies. But do you remember in movies like the 1980s and 90s when you'd have like a 20-minute intro and they'd show everyone who's going to be in the movie and who directed it and produced it. And it would just take forever until the actual movie started. You know, it's funny you say that because I thought that that exact same thing happened in when Harry Met Sally, which I just watched.

I was thinking like, I said to Robin, what is going on? Just start the movie already. It took so long. We have to play like three songs. There's also a lot of really good investing stuff in this. So maybe we can get into this in some of our. category. Wait, you know what? I'm mixing it up. No, no, no, no. It was this movie that I thought the intro was so long. You're right. It was so noticeably long. There was like a full

song in there, right? I don't remember what the song was, but... It was like this for every 80s movie. So, you know what? Before we get into a lot of the stuff, I'm just going to put this out there. This does not make it into the holiday movies for me. No, just because he dressed up as Santa once. Yeah, I don't know. Well, if this is a Christmas movie, sorry to keep harpy on this one, but if this is a Christmas movie, then so is when Harry Met Sally. Okay, can I just say that these are like the worst arguments in the history of the world? What's a Christmas movie and what's not? Like, I don't care if you think Diehard's a Christmas movie or not.

I just don't, I don't know. I'm over it. Okay, I agree. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, who really gives a shit, but... Yes, this is a movie that happens around Christmas time. But I've... I don't know. I don't really care about that stuff.

All right, well, sorry, geez. I'm sick of the diehard one. We have it every year and it doesn't... Okay. All right, so let's go through some of the things that have aged best and worse from this. Here's the one that I think maybe aged worst, and I think it was a timing thing. The fact that the Duke brothers who ran the investment firm, if you haven't seen this movie, I guess go watch it before you listen to this. But should we give a just a brief? We have a synopsis. So it's called

Trading Places because Dan Aykroyd plays Lewis Winthrop III, which is a great name. They kind of nailed the name on that perfectly. And Eddie Murphy plays a homeless guy. And there's two guys that are the Duke brothers that are these old billionaire guys that run a commodity trading firm. And they make a bet with each other that they could take this homeless guy off the street and have him trade places with Dan Aykroyd. And they kind of destroy Dan Aykroy's life and bring in Eddie Murphy and groom him to run the investment firm to see if he could do it the same way. That was well done, Ben. That was pretty damn perfect. Pretty good, right? The crux of the argument is nature versus nurture.

Yes. And does talent really matter in the investing business maybe? Maybe that's another one. So I thought one of the things that aged relatively poorly was the fact that in the early 80s, they assumed that a commodities trading firm was the top echelon of things in the investment business, which was kind of funny because I guess at that point, bonds had gotten crushed because interest rates rose and inflation was high, and stocks had gotten crushed. This is only four years after the death of equities in the bull market was just beginning. So it's just kind of funny to think that commodities were this prestigious thing,

back then. There's no way that would be the case today. Correct. You're right. I thought something that obviously aged terribly was all of the racism and the N-word, the F-word, homophobia. It is pretty crazy. Some of the stuff they said in this movie would just never, never fly today. It felt like you were watching something from the 50s at some points that it really wasn't that long ago. So yeah, that stuff didn't age well. One of the things I like about all these investing movies, and we talked about this with Boileroom. Anytime there's an investment, there has to be a catalyst. There has to be this thing that's going to make the market move immediately to add some drama to it. There's never going to be an index fund movie, obviously. But it's always got to be something that moves. So

anytime they made a commodities trade, remember they were trading in their car? They had like the little fake computer in their car and they were trading commodities. And he goes, all right, hit the sell button. And he goes, wait, wait. And they wait like 10 seconds and the price goes up, now sell. Like they knew something was going to happen in that 10 seconds. It's just kind of funny. The Dukes were just all about money. And actually, I think that's what aged the best. Yeah, I was going to say that too.

Is the socioeconomic stuff and money at the root of everything. There's a few lines about this. One of them says to the other. We seem to be paying our employees a lot of money. And then Dan Ackworth says, can't get around the old minimum wage. And obviously, that's one of the reasons why I think you could remake this movie today. Because they kind of paint these billionaires in just, just this air of just completely being out of touch, only caring about money and themselves

and not caring about the regular person and the regular man. And so that's why I think this movie would play really well today if they redid it somehow. Yeah, I agree. This is definitely a remakeable. Don't you think it's always eerie to see the Twin Towers in an old movie? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the trading was in the Merck Exchange at the Twin Towers at the end. So matter of fact, I completely forgot that I apologize to keep. But this is fresh in my mind because I literally just watched when Harry met Sally. But there's a scene in Washington Square. Did you see when Harry met Sally recently?

But there's a scene in Washington Square Park where they're looking through the big arches. And this is before my time because I wasn't in the city like when I was that age. But through the arches, you saw the Twin Towers. So yes, it is very, you're seeing that. But early on in the movie, one of the brothers says to the other, money isn't, oh, it's Randolph. Randolph says, money isn't everything, Mortimer. And then he says back to him, oh, grow. up. Yes, they played the billionaire as well. Here's the other thing. The very first scene with

Dan Aykroyd, he walks into the investment firm, blue shirt, white collar. Yep. That aged poorly. Yes. He fires up that little tiny machine, whatever that is. There's got to be people that still wear that. I'm sure a listener will tell us exactly what that computer was. So what did you think aged the best? Oh, you agreed with me of the money thing? You know what? A little thing to me that age the best. So this was, I read this. This was Eddie Murphy's second movie he ever made. I guess. He was only 22. Yeah, 22 or 23. I think Eddie Murphy's laugh age is the best for me. Right? I don't know why. That just brings me back to the 80s. And I thought, of course,

like you said, I thought just using rich people as villains, I thought they age perfectly. So sticking with the New York thing, I completely forgot that this movie was shot in Philadelphia. I guess in my mind, if you asked me, I just would have assumed it was Chicago. And I don't know why, but in doing a little bit of research, it said that they weren't allowed to shoot in Chicago. Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah, I kind of thought that was interesting, too. Here's the other thing. Pork Belly Futures existed back then. I believe that is something that has been stopped as well now, right? Yeah, I think in the last five years or so. Yes, so that's stopped. I also thought the way that they portrayed rich people and obviously this movie was a comedy so they were overdoing it. Well, this wasn't rich. This was wealthy people. Yes, but they were doing it in a way of, remember the show and

the 80s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach. Maybe you don't remember it. But I know the name. They kind of portrayed rich people in that way. I thought that was. Honestly, Philadelphia was a lovely place for a business movie because you don't see that very often. And I lived there for a while.

Did you say lovely? Yes. I lived in Philadelphia, so I have a lot of love for that city. I lived there for like six months. Great city. Not a fond of the sports teams. Great city. Okay.

I got one more that didn't age well. Go ahead. Jamie Lee Curtis is in the movie and she plays a prostitute who would be friends, Dan Eckwood's character. And she talks about how she's not just like any prostitute. She saves her money. And she claimed she saved $42,000 and had it all in T-bills. And she must have been 22, 23 in this movie.

And she said with her $42,000 in T-bills that she was going to retire in three years. A little unrealistic. Well, with interest rates at the levels they were at, people probably thought that. No, no, no. My point is the fact that she was saving that much money and knew what T-bills were at that age. But good point. Okay. The best quote to me was when the Duke brothers were explaining to Billy Ray what they do.

And he goes, sounds like you guys are a couple of bookies. Yes, yes, that was perfect. He said, whether our clients make money or lose money, Duke and Duke get their commissions. And that's when Murphy said, I had that in mind too. Sounds like you guys are a couple of bookies. Yeah, Eddie Murphy is, he was great in this. And he had some good lines too when he was pretending to have no legs at the beginning when he was a homeless man. Oh, that killed me.

That killed me. Yes, that was very good. Okay, here's the other thing. He played a blind guy with no legs, and the cops grabbed him under the arms and picked him up, and he's like, my legs, my eyes, I can see. Yeah, young Eddie Murphy, it's pretty good. They also said,

nothing you have ever experienced can prepare you for the unbrinaled cartage you're about to witness, and that's when they were showing Eddie Murphy how the markets work. That was pretty good. Most unrealistic scene. I mean, the whole movie was incredibly absurd, so it was hard to pick one.

It was over the top. I thought Akroyd going down so quickly, going to jail, the IRS freezing his assets? That would never happen. That was a little over top. Here's the other thing. So they, they take Eddie Murphy, they clean him up, they give him a nice suit, and they tell him he can live in Dan Aykroyd's pad with the Butler and all, and they tell him he's got all this money now. So the first thing he does is he takes his limo when he goes to the bar that he used to frequent, and he tells everyone for the bar to come back to his house. And they immediately have a party. And that is such an 80s thing

where all of a sudden a party just comes out of nowhere. And these women who are at the party are dancing, and then all of a sudden they just take their tops off. So that's the kind of thing, like, in the 80s, there was just random, topless women for no apparent reason whatsoever. You mean in movies? Yes, in the 1980s. I would say that sort of age poorly, it was just weird. Like, there was a lot of...

It made no sense. Yeah, there was a lot of like gratuitous nudity. Yes, that was totally unnecessary. And, yeah, that party scene, I thought, was a little over the top. But again, this was an over-the-top movie, so you have to kind of go in just knowing that. Best character? I mean, it's got to be Eddie Murphy, right? He was so good.

I mean, he was just, yes. I saw, I had Billy Ray Valentine, but I would just say more broadly, Eddie Murphy. How about the scene on the train where he opens the cart and he's like, Merry New Year? I mean, honestly, I give a special mention to the Duke brothers, too. Those guys played the rich. They did. They nailed it. Jerk, A-hole, old white guys.

They played that perfectly. Do you have anything else for best character? Okay, so we agree there. worse acting. I had to think about this, but it hit me and it wasn't even close. Dan Aykroyd's girlfriend was terrible. Ah, yes, the rich girlfriend who leaves him. And maybe that's the point, but she was only in one other movie, so she did not have a big career. All right, what was your favorite scene? Um, I guess when they bail Eddie Murphy out of jail and they pick him up and he's sitting in the limo in between the two of them and they're introducing themselves and

he goes, hey, Morty, what it is. He taps the driver on the shoulder and he goes, what's going on here? Yeah, yeah. Like, what's, I don't believe this. I love that. I mean, the best scene, not necessarily a scene, but just the whole last half hour where they start showing the traders. And doesn't that just still, kind of like the boiler room stuff we talked about before,

calling someone up and getting them to buy a stock that way, just the fact that you would have hundreds of traders yelling at each other and writing out tickets. And then they would somehow, that would somehow work. as a way to keep Marcus functioning properly. How did that ever happen that there had to be so many mistakes made back then, right? Didn't you write a post a while ago about the backlog in 1962? And this happened all the time, where they were still like matching orders at seven at night. Right. And I'm sure that there was like, well, you messed up before. So I owe you one in the future. I'm sure there was a lot of that going on. But as far as the customer or client getting the best execution, those spreads had to be

just enormous and they had to be just terrible how that whole thing worked. It's just kind of crazy. The guys in the coats yelling at each other. But I thought one of the underrated scenes was when the bell rings for the market to open and the bathroom stall doors all open at the exact same time and all the guys rush out of the stall to run out to the trading store. So were they doing drugs in there? What did you read into that? I guess I didn't read into it too much. I didn't know if they were doing a pregame or yeah, doing drugs. That's a good point. And also the other great scene was when, so Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd finally decide to team up and they're going to take the Dukes down through the concentrated orange juice market, which that was such a perfect

one for the movie, right? That they decided to take the OJ market down. But they get together and they take the car to the trading floor and they're going to execute their grand vision and take down the Dukes and take this OJ report and they get out of the car and Dan Aykroyd gives him the speech on the way into the trading floor about what it's going to be like and how to do it. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear, that's the other guy's problem. That was good. That was the perfect part because he said, buy low, sell high, fear, that's the other guy's problem. I just thought that whole thing where he explains to him the markets was perfect.

The other thing that was kind of funny to me, I guess maybe this is one of the didn't age well things. It's kind of like a 1980s plot hole where all of a sudden Eddie Murphy is this guy panhandling on the street and he's homeless. And then they don't really even show him getting trained by these guys, but he's all of a sudden. just running the investment for him, like he knows what he's doing, just because they put a suit on him? I mean, a little bit of a plot hole, but I'm picking nits here. Worst scene. Well, we already went over that, remember? It was the party scene. No, I do have a worse scene.

Okay. To me, the worst scene was the train with the gorilla. I didn't think it was funny. The gorilla suit wasn't the greatest either for the, what it was supposed to be a real gorilla. That was a little over the top. You noticed that was Jim Belushi playing the guy. dressed in a I did notice that. I also thought that the shot they show of at the very end where it's the traders and the orange juice price is rising and then it's falling based on the report

and what's going to happen and what's going on in the markets. Wasn't that just a microcosm of that buy, buy, buy, sell, sell, sell cartoon? Which is like my all time favorite market cartoon. Yeah, totally. That's exactly what that was. I got some fun facts for you. All right, hit me up. This was originally supposed to be with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. And, the title was black and white. That would not have aged well. No, I agree. Trading places is much better. Did you go through the IMDB trivia here? I didn't go through IMDB yet, but I'm sure it's the same stuff. Did you find out about the Eddie Murphy rule in the Dodd-Frank? Yes. Is this real? Yes, it is real. I saw this in several places. So apparently, insider trading in the commodities

futures market was not illegal prior to 2010. And so- That's why I didn't think it was real. How could that not be illegal? Don't know. So they actually called this. They actually called this the Eddie Murphy rule. Like Congress called this to the Eddie Murphy rule, which made that illegal. So in the movie, they have this guy, what's his name? Beaker, bleaker, who's their inside man? Yes, the guy carrying the briefcase. That was the other funny thing about the markets is the fact that a report that was locked in a briefcase that came from Florida was going to move the markets. Isn't that just wild to think about now that that would matter. And it was like a report for the entire year and it was just a forecast. When Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd give him the opposite information, I guess there's

supposed to be a shortage of orange juice. So the Mortimer's going all in. Meanwhile, it's the opposite. And Ackroyd and Murphy are selling short. And then the market crashes them. They buy. And then at the end, they go, time to settle up. And they're like, we don't have $347 million in cash lag around. Yeah, they got margined. They got margined. And I thought this would have been a better joke had the big short not happened. I was going to say this had to be a movie because Akroydon Murphy made their money at the end by shorting. And that's why it had to be a movie because no short seller would ever become out of the hero at the end, right?

Yep. Did you know, I did not know this. Breaking Beds. You remember Gus Fring? Yeah, he was in the jail cell, right? Yeah, I noticed that. I didn't catch that. Okay.

So when the Dukes are explaining commodities to Billy Ray Valentine, they put a bunch of them on a plate. And they say, here's some pork bellies. Here's, what else did they have? Gold. Corn, I don't remember. One of them was gold bar. They had some, like, wheat. They said they had a one kilogram bar of gold on it.

Someone actually took the time to look at the price. At the time of the release, the gold would have been worth roughly $120,000. Okay. Gold that was on the table. So I looked at it. In 1983, the price of gold was like 480. Now it's 14 in change. So up three times since then.

The S&P is up. almost 2,000 percent since then. So if you would have taken trading places as your contrarian signal, that was the time to go into stacks. The screenwriters who wrote this movie hung out with drunk traders for their research. And so they said they hung out with the traders in Los Angeles because it was three hours behind New York. And basically he said by 2 p.m. every day those traders were wasted.

And that's how they got all the stories that they could use. So they had a big electronic status board at Duke and Duke that I guess you can see in the Christmas scene. and it kind of tells what's going on with all the different markets. And they said that that screen they used was the big money board from Family Feud back in the day. Oh, wow. To show, I thought that was kind of interesting. That's good.

So when we first spoke, you rewatch this sooner than I did, you sounded like you didn't really care for it. You said it did not age well. Well, some of the stuff didn't age well. I thought it kind of took till the end to bring it back. It wasn't as funny as I remembered it. With a movie with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, I thought there weren't as many laugh out loud parts in it.

But it brought me around at the end because the last half hour is just so good. I think that part really seals a deal and kind of brought me around at the end. That's a good observation because it's really not that funny. It's just a good movie. Obviously, it's completely silly and totally over the top. But there are not a lot of scenes where I laughed out loud. No, they tried to make the part in the train funny. It wasn't as funny.

It was probably funnier back then than it is now. Another scene that I laughed at, when Akroyd is back in his bed and he sees Coleman, he's like, oh, I thought it was all a dream. And then he sees Eddie Murphy, he just jumps up and strangles him. Yes, that was good. So this actually is based on, there was those two brothers. I guess they were like the Hunt brothers of Texas in 1980. They tried to corner the silver market.

And they got like a $100 million margin call. And so that's kind of loosely what this was based on. As the Duke brothers were trying to corner the orange juice market, this was the, those Hunt brothers were trying to do the silver market as well. I read something that the writer used to play tennis with two brothers that were like Uber competitive and they were the genesis of the idea. And obviously, I thought one of the best things about just rich people being jerks that they were trying to portray is that the whole bet, they ruined Dan Aykroy's life and the whole bet was for a dollar. But I thought that was actually pretty good. Okay, if they

made this movie today, which again, I think could be done, cancel all billionaires type of thing. I think that message would resonate, but what would they do for the plot line today? I haven't given this much thought. What do you think? I said this. It would definitely have to be a hedge fund because just with the amount of money, I mean, think about how many hedge funders these days make billions of dollars on there. We talked about this a few weeks ago, how much money that they make. I think this is definitely Dan Aykroyd works for a hedge fund, and the hedge fund takes down and destroys his life and brings someone in and tries to make them one of their head traders or something in the hedge fund.

I think that movie could be made today. One wrinkle, if they brought in somebody in the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, they would virtue signal it all over the place. Yes. Right? They would be on the cover of magazines. Yes, exactly. And this, again, there was a lot of stuff in, I can't believe the 1980s. Some of the stuff they said was just would not fly today at all.

But here's another thing that aged well. This is Jamie Lee Curtis's first movie, I guess, outside of horror films, they said. Yeah. She was good. She was very good. She was great. Yes. Unrealistic character. The fact that she just was a prostitute and just turned around and decided to help Dan Aykroyd get back on his feet, even though they didn't know each other. Had unrealistic? Yes. It was also unrealistic when she just decided to take her top off every time she got in bed of them for no reason. But she was very good as well. So the casting of this was great. Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis, and then the Duke brothers. I thought they nailed all of those casting decisions. This was a good movie.

final thoughts for me again expectations are literally everything especially in movies there was a mismatch when I first saw it I was disappointed and because I remembered being disappointed at the first time when I saw it the second time I enjoyed it that much more so final answer this is worthy of maybe not all of the adoration but most of it yeah I'd say this is a solid movie I would not put it in the classics pile because there's a lot of classics in the 80s and this one doesn't fit that for me but it was solid. All right, but we understand the nostalgia premium, so. Yes. And honestly, I think because there aren't a lot of finance movies made, it's a small pile to choose from, basically. All right. Thank you for listening. Animal Spiritspod at

gmail.com. Hope everybody has a very happy holidays, and we will see you next time.