Watch These Movies If You Are into Stock Investing and Wealth Building

A great movie watched is a time well spent. Movies are not only for the romantic, willing to be consumed with love and poetry. They aren't only made for the softie with tissues on their hands who wants to shed a few teardrops over a tragic movie ending.

Movies can also teach one about money and the business world. They show how A-class personalities thrive in the cut-throat, high-performance world of economics. More precisely, movies can also narrate the stories of the stock market from all around the world.

Not all movies about the stock market/ business world are worth watching. Most only focus on the greed aspect of earning wealth. Although fear and greed are etched in the stock market, it isn't only about that.

The stock market is a free enterprise. In fact, it is as democratic and liberal that humanity can get. Every individual can participate and succeed in the stock market. The age, gender, ethnicity, professional title, and religious beliefs matter the least in the stock market than any other social setting.

Also, the basic principle of the stock market is to make money for ideas and businesses to thrive. Someone else said it right:

"Wall Street is the capital in capitalism, and even when we hate its greed and recklessness, we not only need Wall Street to exist but want it to thrive, even when we think, or are led to believe, that we don’t.

Wall Street is generally not the cause of financial crises; rather, it is the place a financial crisis often first expresses itself."

William D. Cohan, Why Wall Street Matters

Here are the top movies that everyone interested in the stock market should watch. They show the sides of the stock market that you as a retail investor would never notice. These movies will surely go beyond your bubble of understanding and lead you to new waters. Even if you have already watched some of them, let us take you down the memory lane of nostalgia.

1) The Wolf of Wall Street

You knew this movie was going to make it to this list. The Wolf of Wall Street is the real story of Jordan Belfort, an American author, motivational speaker, former stockbroker, and convicted felon.

This movie revolves around how Jordan Belfort, who started as a stockbroker, eventually ends up founding a stockbroker company with shady business practices. The movie is a story of lust, greed, drugs, and anything that money can buy.

Jordan Belfort is played by the legendary Leonardo Dicaprio. Dicaprio is highly successful in portraying the dark life that the real Jordan Belfort lived in the world of money. Jordan's life stands as a real example of what happens to a human being if the greed of money manifests itself.

In other words, this movie shows how everyone has a little bit of Jordan Belfort in themselves, and how the availability of money can reveal those dark intentions. Given that the real Jordan Belfort has served his sentence and now lives a decent life, his story is an inspiration for many. As they say, it is wise to learn from the mistakes of others.

The book The Wolf of Wall Street, written by the real Jordan Belfort himself, is an even raw and descriptive version of his story.

Now go download and watch the movie before we spoil it for you.

2) Limitless

What happens if we never forget the things we see, read, and hear? What if there is no limit to what we can learn? How successful will it make us?

Limitless is a movie in which a drug can do all of that. The pill can enhance your memory, attention, and comprehension which makes you instantly likable to everyone. Since the surest path to business success is a good network, the main character of the movie instantly joins the rank of the high-achievers, thanks to the magic pill.

One should note that this movie isn't entirely about the stock market. After the main character realizes the wonders of the drug, he is shown trading stocks with impressive returns. He eventually joins a large corporation as an investor managing a huge sum of investment funds.

However, the downside is that the pill must be taken regularly to sustain the enhancements. If one misses out on the needed dose, the effects can be the exact opposite, even deadly. Watch this movie to see how the main character deals with this drawback.

3) The Big Short

Before talking about this movie, let us show you how impressive the cast of this movie is.

The film stars legendary actors like Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt. Also, it features cameo appearances by actress Margot Robbie, chef Anthony Bourdain, singer-songwriter Selena Gomez, and economist Richard Thaler.

However, the movie isn't what one would consider Hollywood-type. The Big Short is rather a passive but engaging narration of real events that crashed the US economy and economies worldwide in the late 2000s.

The movie revolves around the Housing Bubble in the United States in the 2000s and how the crash eventually led to the Great Recession in the United States. More importantly, it shows how an isolated group of nerds had already anticipated the catastrophe early on but no one would listen to them.

These select few who predicted the crash beforehand bought financial instruments that essentially allowed them to bet on the US economy. This means that if they were right, the US economy would collapse and the instruments would bring them a huge amount of profits from this bet.

This movie teaches a lot about the real estate economy, stock market, short selling, credit instruments, etc. Definitely an interesting watch for money aficionados.

4) Boiler Room

Seth Davis, a 19-year-old Queens College dropout, runs an unlicensed casino in his home near the campus, catering to college students. However, his father still sees him as a disappointment and does not approve of his "business venture".

With hopes of a better financial future and an opportunity to make his father proud, Seth joins a brokerage firm. It does not take long for Seth to realize that the firm works on the boiler room strategy. The boiler room is a room or office in which many operators engage in high-pressure telephone sales, especially of risky or worthless investments.

To sum up the movie without spoiling it, the movie shows the dark side of capitalism and the financial industry. It shows the extent of what can happen in the process of health building and how innocent people are robbed of their hard-earned money by the conmen in the disguise of sophisticated-sounding bankers.

5) Trading Places

Trading Places is a humorous yet insightful movie.

Basically, this movie is a bet between two rich brothers. One is confident that upbringing makes a man successful while the other brother thinks that people's fate is decided before birth.

How will they find out who is right?

By experimenting of course. The brothers choose a successful investment banker and a Negro slum dweller. They take everything away from the banker, leaving him penniless on the road. Meanwhile, they bring the poor guy to the world of riches and give him the responsibility to handle the investment bank.

Now, both the banker and the poor guy do not know that they are the guinea pigs in the experiment. Both think that a series of life events led them to where they get. Trading Places is an interesting and humorous insight into the age-old debate of nature vs nurture.