Chapter 2 of 30 · 5'01"
Jordan's first day on Wall Street comes with a lunch he never forgets. Mark Hanna orders martinis on a precise schedule and explains how the business really works: 'Your only responsibility is to put meat on the table.' On the surface it is mentoring; underneath, it is a ritual that turns a new broker into a predator.
❝ Monologue · 30 lines The Rules of Wall Street, Over Martinis
❝ Monologue · 12 lines Hanna's Absurd Prescription for Success
On Jordan Belfort's first day at the brokerage, his boss Mark Hanna takes him to lunch and orders a steady stream of martinis. Over drinks, Hanna lays out what the job really is: sign up clients, earn commissions, and treat the market as a game. He offers his own two keys to success, and neither has much to do with finance.
The lunch is not really about food; it is an initiation. Hanna is charming, calm, and completely cynical, and he sells Jordan a worldview in which the client exists to be used. 'Your only responsibility is to put meat on the table,' he says, which sounds like a work ethic until you notice whose table he means. The other line he keeps circling — that nobody, not even Warren Buffett, knows where a stock is going — is his license for the whole trade. If prediction is impossible, then selling certainty is just showmanship, and the broker's real job is to move money from the client's pocket into his own. Jordan laughs along, but he is already taking notes.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“Nobody knows if a stock is gonna go up, down, sideways, or in fucking circles.”
It strings every direction a stock might take and lands on circles: honest and profane at once.
Informal
“Your only responsibility is to put meat on the table.”
Turning sales targets into meat on the table makes the job brutally concrete.
Informal
“This is not a tip, this is a prescription.”
The not-a-X-this-is-Y flip upgrades advice into an order you had better follow.
Informal
“Move the money from your client's pocket into your pocket.”
The whole business model in one line: just move money between pockets.
Informal
Number one rule of Wall Street. Nobody... I don't care if you're Warren Buffett or if you're Jimmy Buffett. Nobody knows if a stock is gonna go up, down, sideways, or in fucking circles. - Least of all stockbrokers, right? - Mmm-hmm. It's all a fugazi. You know what a fugazi is? Uh. Fugayzi. It's a fake. Fugayzi, fugazi, it's a whazy, it's a woozy, it's... Fairy dust. It doesn't exist. It's never landed. It is no matter. It's not on the elemental chart. It's not fucking real. - Right? - Right. - Stay with me. - Mmm-hmm. We don't create shit. We don't build anything. No. So if you got a client who bought stock at 8 He wants to cash in, liquidate, take his fucking money and run home. - You don't let him do that. - Okay. - 'Cause that would make it real. - Right. No. What do you do? You get another brilliant idea. A special idea. Another "situation." Another stock to reinvest his earnings and then some. And he will, every single time. 'Cause they're fucking addicted. And you just keep doing this, again and again and again. Meanwhile, he thinks he's getting shit rich, which he is, on paper. But you and me, the brokers, we're taking home cold hard cash via commission, motherfucker.
This is not a tip, this is a prescription. - Trust me. - Mmm-hmm. If you don't, you will fall out of balance, split your differential and tip the fuck over. Or worse yet, I've seen this happen, implode. No, I don't want to implode, sir. No. No, you don't. I'm in it for the long run, you know? - Implosions are ugly. - Yeah. Pop off to the bathroom, work one out any time you can. When you get really good at it, you'll fucking be stroking it and you'll be thinking about money.
Up next · 03the ins and outsThe scene: Black Monday Crushes Jordan's CareerIt is an initiation. Hanna orders a schedule of martinis and uses the meal to sell Jordan a worldview: clients are marks, prediction is impossible, and the only real job is commissions.
He argues that even Warren Buffett cannot know where a stock will go. That is his license for the whole business: if prediction is impossible, a broker is selling confidence rather than knowledge.
In his view a client is just a source of commissions. He tells Jordan his only responsibility is to put meat on the table, meaning produce money for himself rather than serve the client.
It is Hanna's slang for something fake or made up. He uses it to say the whole idea of a predictable market is an illusion with nothing behind it.
He treats the lunch as a blueprint. The cynicism and the habits Hanna models here shape how Jordan builds his own firm and its culture.
