They say it takes a brilliant man to understand difficult concepts and a genius to explain them. To engage readers in a truthful and believable tale about a trader’s tumultuous Wall Street career in this day and age it takes a cutting edge writer with bipolar disorder.
From his beginning as a frugal, hyper responsible, and wise beyond his years Coast Guard Officer to “the big ETF trader at Lehman Brothers”, who happens to also be speculatively lugging around $1B worth of two-year notes, Jared Dillian tells a brilliant tale about his trip on Wall St. His manic career was largely bookended by two world changing events of very different denominations – the attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the Lehman bankruptcy that will forever punctuate the fate of the credit bubble bursting. Street Freak is so captivating because it examines those events only as they apply this trader’s mental state and be forewarned: the emotional volatility is not for the faint of heart.
Dillian may have sealed his own fate when guaranteeing job interviewers he could work harder than anyone else because he was "insane". He guided himself in that direction by applying ancient academic trading principles, complex behavioral theory, and a military work ethic to his trading desk at Lehman where his job quoting clients was skewed sharply toward the impossible. He admits there is nothing fun about the indignities of his trading job, yet he wouldn’t trade it for the world. Dillian actually did his job masterfully but the emotional side of his brain and inherent fear of failure kept him from processing everyday information properly and he experienced waves of paranoid panic attacks. Some of them are sad while others are blatantly amusing and you get the distinct feeling Dillian knows which is which.
The originality of Street Freak lies in Dillian’s rapier wit and ability to analyze situations down to their bare bones. His skill in stepping outside of himself to observe his own behavior at all the right moments makes his book a treat from start to finish. Dillian should be commended for noticing during his time in a mad trading fish bowl that decent people do unflattering things when getting bombs dropped on their head on a daily basis, that people who are smart and lazy really do make the best colleagues, and that no one is entitled to anything on Wall St. You can slay all the trading dragons in the land, conjure untold millions in extra profits from perfectly executed trades, but in the end - you get what you get.
In this day and age there is TRULY a lot to be said for that but it takes a complete Street Freak to roll you up in a tale like this one.
