Top Five Films that Would You Give a Sneak Peek into the Finance World!

What’s the image that comes to your mind when you think of finance professionals? Do you see a bunch of men and women in pantsuits, a noisy trading floor, meeting rooms, a lot of equations, and a life of luxury? While this is not the complete and appropriate picture.

But we believe you get most of it from watching movies on finance professionals. We don’t blame you. These films are not just entertaining. They’re educative too. They give you a glimpse of a different world.

If you are a fan of finance-based films, we are sure you must have seen the ones on the list below. However, if you have not watched them yet, start your binge-watching journey now!

Wall Street

This 1987 movie should be the place where you start. It is the go-to film that gave us a sneak-peek of all the happenings in the corporate world. A corporate tycoon Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) and a gullible rookie in the stockbroking world Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) keep you hooked to the edge of your seats with their firecracker performances. Michael mentors the newbie so that Charlie teaches him the ropes of the trading game.

The producer, Oliver Stone’s father, was a stockbroker during the Great Depression, and the movie is a tribute to his father and all the other stockbrokers out there! However, the producer does not just make this movie an ode to the passion for numbers that stockbrokers have. It also explores their greed for success, and it goes to an extent where it terrifies you. Seeing Michael stop at nothing to fulfill his goals using unscrupulous and more unscrupulous ways will give you sleepless nights.

American Psycho

Well, this one is less of finance but more of a psychopath movie. But it explores how the excessive desire to succeed can bring out the bad in a person. However, every businessperson’s generalizing as a psychopath, as it happens on screen, isn’t fair. Well, this film serves madness with oodles of thrill, murder, suspense, et al. This maybe not for the faint-hearted, but if you have the stomach for a thrilling finance film, well, this is it.

Trading Places

Finance films do not always have to be psychotic or dark. It can have numerous other dimensions, too, including a comic angle! Trading Places film is hilarious to boot, yet it depicts the corporates’ real life, focusing on short selling.

In this film, Eddie Murphy, a young man without a roof over his head suddenly, invades the finance world and yet tricks the seasoned financers with his bag full of tricks and ideas. Watching the unequal warring parties (Eddie and Dan Akroyd) at loggerheads, two brokers decide to back the homeless to climb up the corporate world ladder.

The Big Short

While the former film is a hilarious take on short-selling ambiguities, The Big Short focuses on the devastating consequences of the same on the orange juice commodities traders. It is a reel version of the housing bubble collapse in 2008. They’re a powerful group of investors belonging to investment firms who bet against the American people and their homes. This movie includes a lot of drama. It will give you an inkling of the housing market collapse and how it can happen in the real world.

Margin Call

A margin call isn’t good news for investors. The film of the same name explores an unnamed firm’s future, which suddenly wakes up to the reality of the economic meltdown that submerges the firm like an avalanche. The film’s tense moments are played to perfection by the ensemble cast, all incredible tuning performances.

Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, gives out the standout performances. The unfolding of a tragedy and how the head honchos try to avoid the debacle and the conscientious bigwigs being dragged into an unethical chasm they try so hard to avoid.

This film makes you think long after the role of the last reel.
So, these are a few of our favorite finance films that give more than a sneak peeks into the financial world! While these are some of our favorites, others deserve mention, including Inside Job, Barbarians at the Gate, The Wolf of Wall Street, and more. Tell us, do you have any favorites of your own? Tell us in the comments section below, and tell us why are they your absolute favorites?