The Buy Side

andlt;pandgt;The Buy Side, by former Galleon Group trader Turney Duff, portrays an after-hours Wall Street culture where drugs and sex are rampant and billions in trading commissions flow to those who dangle the most enticements.andamp;#160; A remarkable writing debut, filled with indelible moments, The Buy Side shows as no book ever has the rewards andamp;ndash; and dizzying temptations andamp;ndash; of making a living on the Street.andamp;#160;Growing up in the 1980andamp;rsquo;s Turney Duff was your average kid from Kennebunk, Maine, eager to expand his horizons. After trying andamp;ndash; and failing andamp;ndash; to land a job as a journalist, he secured a trainee position at Morgan Stanley and got his first feel for the pecking order that exists in the trading pits.andamp;#160; Those on the andamp;ldquo;buy side,andamp;rdquo; the traders who make large bets on whether a stock will rise or fall, are the andamp;ldquo;alphasandamp;rdquo; and those on the andamp;ldquo;sell side,andamp;rdquo; the brokers who handle their business, are eager to please.andamp;#160;How eager to please was brought home stunningly to Turney in 1999 when he arrived at the Galleon Group, a colossal hedge-fund management firm run by secretive founder Raj Rajaratnam.andamp;#160; Finally in a position to trade on his own, Turney was encouraged to socialize with the sell side and siphon from his new broker friends as much information as possible.andamp;#160; Soon he was not just vacuuming up valuable tips but also being lured into a variety of hedonistic pursuits.andamp;#160; Naandamp;iuml;ve enough to believe he could keep up the lifestyle without paying a price, he managed to keep an eye on hisandamp;#160;buy-and-sell charts and, meanwhile, pondered the strange goings on at Galleon, where tens of millions were being made each week in sometimes mysterious ways. andamp;#160;At his next positions, at Argus Partners and J.L. Berkowitz, Turney climbed to even higher heights andamp;ndash; and, as it turned out, plummeted to even lower depths andamp;ndash; as, by day, he solidified his reputation one of the Streetandamp;rsquo;s most powerful healthcare traders, and by night, he blazed a path through the cityandamp;rsquo;s nightclubs, showing off his social genius and voraciously inhaling any drug that would fill the void he felt inside.andamp;#160;A mesmerizingly immersive journey through Wall Streetandamp;rsquo;s first millennial decade, and a poignant self portrait by a young man who surely would have destroyed himself were it not for his decision to walk away from a seven-figure annual income, The Buy Side is one of the best coming-of-age-on-the-Street books ever written.andlt;/pandgt;