The Wall Street legend made famous in 'Liar's Poker' has died - here are the most iconic scenes from the book

Lewis describes a friend working as an analyst who "was so strung out that he regularly nipped into a bathroom stall during midday lulls and slept on the toilet. He worked straight through most nights and on weekends, yet felt guilty for not doing more. He pretended to be constipated—in case someone noticed how long he had been gone... Many analysts later admit that their two years between college and business school were the worst of their lives."

Source: Liar's Poker

"...a third, by far the most interesting, couldn't bear to step off the elevator and onto the trading floor. He rode up and down in the rear of the elevator every afternoon. He meant to get off, I think, but was petrified. Word of his handicap spread. It reached the woman in charge of the training program. She went to see for herself. She stood outside the elevator banks on the forty-first floor and watched with her own eyes the doors open and shut for an hour on one very spooked trainee. One day he was gone."

Source: Liar's Poker

"The suitcase goof had started in 1982, with one trader getting hold of another trader's weekend bag and replacing the clothes with pink lace panties. There were at least four goofs and regoofs of this sort between 1982 and 1985. The goof finally stopped spawning more goofs when John D'Antona arrived late one Friday morning with suitcase in hand. He'd planned a weekend trip to Puerto Rico...[Two traders] removed the clothes and inserted about ten pounds of wet paper towels instead. D'Antona didn't discover the switcheroo until he emerged from a hotel shower in Puerto Rico that evening."

Source: Liar's Poker

The trader did not mince words during his exit:

" The managing directors of the London office fell to their knees (figuratively speaking) and pleaded with him to stay. He was the backbone of a new and fragile enterprise, they said. Screw backbones, he said, he had been offered much more money by Goldman Sachs...They expected, they said, for him to forget about trading for a moment and consider the importance of loyalty to the firm. And you know what he said to that? He said, 'You want loyalty, hire a cocker spaniel.' "

After being sent to fetch lunch for several traders, Matty bragged about having snuck out of the cafeteria without paying:

"Stealing food wasn't Matty's big mistake. His big mistake was to brag to one of the fat traders how he had done it. That afternoon Matty received a phone call from a man who claimed to work for the "special projects division of the Securities and Exchange Commission." The SEC, this man explained, had been granted jurisdiction over Wall Street's cafeterias, and he was investigating a reported theft of three trays of food from the Salomon Brothers cafeteria. Would Matty know anything about that?"

Here's what happened when Matty went back to his desk after meeting with managing director Michael Mortara, who orchestrated the entire charade:

"Matty looked around him, however, and saw not only that everyone was laughing but that everyone was laughing at him. He had been made the victim of what was known in the department as a goof. It had been Mortara's idea, but Mortara persuaded Gutfreund to lend a touch of credibility to the ruse."

Source: Liar's Poker

"If you ever care to see how all the world's most awful jokes spread, spend a day on a bond trading desk. When the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated, six people called me from six points on the globe to explain that NASA stands for 'Need Another Seven Astronauts.' "

Source: Liar's Poker

"Remember Chernobyl? When news broke that the Soviet nuclear reactor had exploded, Alexander called...Instantly in his mind less supply of nuclear power equaled more demand for oil, and he was right. His investors made a large killing. Mine made a small killing. Minutes after I had persuaded a few clients to buy some oil, Alexander called back. "Buy potatoes," he said. "Gotta hop. "Then he hung up.? Of course. A cloud of fallout would threaten European food and water supplies, including the potato crop, placing a premium on uncontaminated American substitutes."

Source: Liar's Poker

Buffett lent the firm $700 million to buy its own stock and received a convertible bond with "an interest rate of 9 percent which was in itself a good return on his investment. But in addition, he could trade it in at any time before 1996 for Salomon common stock at thirty-eight dollars a share. In other words, Buffett got a free play, over the next nine years, in the shares of Salomon."

Source: Liar's Poker

When times were stressed around the office, traders wanted some time without Mortara and Ranieri breathing down their necks, and played pranks to try to keep them away:

"The second day the traders removed the support pins from the swivel chair at Ranieri's desk. When he sat down first thing in the morning, he crashed to the floor and nearly cracked his spine. It took minutes to hoist him to his feet while he cursed and shouted."

Source: Liar's Poker