Do you despise Wall Street sufficiently yet?
How about now?
An internal document, known as the “Golden Pitchbook” to senior brokers at John Thomas Financial, has been leaked and it is very, very sexist.
Sexism ain't the half of it. It's basically a manual on how to sell stocks modeled on how the biggest bastards of the used car industry might sell used cars, and is a fine demonstration of how similar the two worlds are. A part of the pitch book known colloquially at the firm as "Don't Pitch the Bitch" demonstrates how to push a client to hurry up and buy some stock
without getting his wife involved:
“(Prospect) if you want to call me back so you can ask your wife if you can buy the stock, I will call my wife and see if I can sell you the stock, come on! You make business decisions daily without your wife.”
“Let’s face it, if you go home and tell your wife that you want to invest with a broker whom you don’t know very well, chances are you will be hit with a frying pan and spending the night on the couch. […]"
Alternatively, maybe you tease the client by … oh, hell, I don't even know what this is:
“Let’s face it, your first step is the hardest. I am not looking for a one night stand. You married your girlfriend right? Let me ask you a question, you met your wife, but you did not jump into bed with her on the first night did you? Of course not!! Maybe you held her hand or maybe even kiss. Well look, I am not looking to jump into bed with you or even get a kiss, I simply want you to hold my hand with 100 shares and [in] 3-6 months you are gonna (sic) want to get into bed with me quite frankly. I am not that guy [laugh]. So do the 100 shares not because it’s good for me, but because it is good for you.”
There's also tips on how to bully clients into buying a stock by claiming that time is running out on this hot deal, or by implying that the client is just a small fish and you're practically doing them a favor by letting them buy from you at all, what with all the bajillionaires you usually work with. Nearly all of it, in fact, it based on bullying the client. Here's the internal pitchbook for a high-profile Wall Street firm, and it reads like a how-to manual for telemarketing scams. Not that that there's much difference there.
Nothing about Wall Street exists to help the little guy. Nothing. It's all just a mechanism for extracting money from the less wealthy, from cities and states, and from entire industries to put into the hands of the very rich.