This is the HBO movie about Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Anyone else watch it yet? IMO, there were some really good individual performances - especially DiNiro, Michelle Pfeifer and the guy who played Bernie's oldest son.

But I thought it was lacking in backstory - why he did what he did and how he did what he did. Focused on life after scandal broke.

Overall I thought it was entertaining and reminds you about the thousands of lives this guy destroyed - including those of his own family.

Ok movie... Not sure the why has ever really been answered and, if you aren't in trading, you aren't going to understand how he did what he did or what split strike conversion is.

What's disturbing abt the inner workings of it all is how greed and good news really overtakes logic and reason when it comes to money. Harry Markopoulis was the initial Madoff whistle blower and his research finding the fraud wasn't exactly ground breaking or cutting edge. Nobody listened or played along into it though because 'hey constant 12% returns'... Classic case of heads being buried in the sand. Madoff bet on nobody doing real due diligence if he just continuously fed good news and he was right... Until the financial crisis happened and he couldn't stay up with withdrawals.

He was literally just making trades up in markets where mathematically it couldn't work even if he owned all of the open interest on particular options. Feeder funds did nothing but collect their client fees and effectively massive kickbacks back from Madoff and were happy to report big returns to clients... And nobody asked questions because they thought life was grand and were flying high on the constant and consistent better return vs market.

By "how he did what he did" - I'll be more clear. Not wanting something real technical, but maybe a couple more scenes from the 17th floor and what all those folks were doing.

Watched this weekend. Solid movie. Made for a good Saturday night (I watched without the wife as I did not expect to like it as much as I did....it was good enough that I will probably watch again in the next week or two so she can watch).

I do agree I wish they would have given a little more backstory on the funds. I feel like the movie was based on what many already know (he cheated people, went to jail, impact on his kids, etc). What most don't know is how it got to the point that it did and his specific background to get him the respect he had (hinted at with discussions of NASDAQ etc).

Saw it last night and thought it was pretty good. The makeup job on De Niro was amazing.

No need to understand the split strike thing. None of his investors did. He just made up the numbers anyway.

The way he was portrayed trying to salvage the fund In Nov-08, just before giving up in Dec-08, was appalling. Still taking in money, including from family, to try to stay afloat.

So if the financial crisis didn't happen then he likely would not have been caught?

AggieStout said:

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So if the financial crisis didn't happen then he likely would not have been caught?

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I don't think a fraud of that magnitude could've gone undetected forever. Of course, it survived at least 16 years before the crisis erupted. So, who knows.