Stock Market And Trading Movies

As a serial investor, I always enjoy watching movies about trading and the stock market in general. I’m not just into stacking precious metals, I trade the stock market almost every day and truly enjoy studying how financial markets work.

As a lighter post today I’m going to share with you the best stock market movies I watch over and over again. I’ll do my best to update this list as new finance movies are released.

Historic Finance Movies You Must Watch as an Investor

For me, it all started with Wall Street. Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, and Martin Sheen set the table for me to become addicted to financial markets.

Wall Street

This 1987 film was directed and co-written by Oliver Stone. It shares the story of an up and coming stock broker named Bud Fox, who is played by a young Charlie Sheen. Fox gets mixed up with a corporate raider named Gordon Gekko, masterfully played by Michael Douglas.

Critics loved the movie and Douglas earned an Academy Award for Best Actor. Excess and cockiness was on full display in this movie as Gekko coined the phrase “Greed is good.” Many people sought out the trading lifestyle and many stock brokers were inspired by the characters in the film. The movie was eventually made into a sequel called “Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps,” which came out in 2010.

I found the film very detailed at shaping how corruption exists in all markets (insider trading, anyone?) as well as showing the world how ruthless a corporate raider can be. This was my introduction to finance movies.

Boiler Room

If the Wall Street movie was an introduction to excess for me, Boiler Room was chapter two. Boiler Room, even more than Wall Street, showcased the wild rides that young brokers go on once they come into money. This movie was released when I was in college and it became a favorite amongst male students.

Starring an epic group of young actors like the main character, Giovanni Ribisi, who plays Seth Davis, who after dropping out of Queens College started an underground casino in his home. While Davis is making money hand over fist with his home casino, his father, a federal judge, is appalled at this illegal activity.

On a night when his cousin visits him to play blackjack he meets a wealthy associate, played by Nicky Katt, his who works for a firm called J.T. Marlin. The associate, named Greg Weinstein, promises him riches if he works hard under his tutelage and suggests that the casino’s days are numbered.

When Davis joins the firm, he see’s the madness on the roaring sales floor and is instantly overwhelmed. Ben Affleck, who plays Jim Young, is the “biggest swinging dick” in the office who often urges young brokers to disconnect from their families to go all-in on the wild commissions J.T. Marlin and openly talks about his mansion, luxury vehicles, and liquidity.

The brokers party hard and seem to never sleep. Scott Caan plays Richie O’Flaherty, a hard partying broker who throws a quick fist and has a one-liner for everyone, leads the charge at bar crawls. Vin Diesel, who plays Chris Varick, mentors Davis despite Davis being property of Weinstein, much to his chagrin. This causes a lot of office turmoil and leads to some interesting verbal exchanges.

Once he’s making the money he sought after, Davis finds out the brokerage is simply a chop shop that rips off clients in unruly ways. I won’t give away the ending, but Davis’ heart ends up winning out versus his greed and he’s seen as a compassionate character who genuinely likes to help people.

Loaded with a celebrity cast, this movie will have you howling the entire film.

The Big Short

The Big Short is a biographical comedy-drama directed by Adam McKay, based on the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis.

This movie is iconic to me because it tells the true story of a group of investors who accurately predicted the 2008 housing market collapse. (This also sparked a major demand increase for gold and silver). The group profited handsomely off of their intuition and I liked how the film explains complex financial concepts and makes them entirely understandable to the average Joe investor. The film has no shortage of celebrity cameos including Anthony Bourdain, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, and Margot Robbie. The main character, Michael Burry, is excellently played by Christian Bale while the outspoken hedge fund manager, Mark Baum, is played by Steve Carrell.

This movie opened my eyes to systematic failures as well as the FACT that banks, regulators, and society in general were completely oblivious to the fact that the real estate boom that proceeded the collapse was a house of cards, leading to not only a stock market crash, but rather an overall financial crisis that saw a massive drop in price and demand of real estate across the nation.

The 2008 financial crisis was a turning point in my life personally and got me into investing in precious metals, which is exactly why I’m here. It’s the largest financial crash I’ve experienced in my life and I won’t let something like this wreck my portfolio I’ve built, which is why I’m such a huge advocate for starting a gold IRA.

Wolf of Wall Street

This box office hit depicts the life of Jordan Belfort of Stratton Oakmont. Starting with his humble beginnings selling penny stocks in a quaint office, Wolf of Wall Street shows the rise of Belfort and his merry band of stock brokers who love the high life.

Cocaine, hookers, qualudes, booze, yachts, and even helicopters are on full display in this summary of the real life rise of Belfort, who was brilliantly played by Leonardo Dicaprio.

Belfort eventually is exposed as one of the biggest frauds on Wall Street, but not before amassing an insane fortune in this thrilling story that will have you on the edge of your seat.

This film shows the fast track to success a Wall Street power broker can achieve while also putting on full display the corruption, deceit, and dark side of the investment world while being an absolute banger as a comedy.

While there are many stock market movies that you can learn from, Wolf of Wall Street is more of a comedy and look into the excess (even more so than Boiler Room) that the rich can pull off by being a ruthless salesman.

Bernie Madoff – The Monster of Wall Street

This series ran on Netflix and it highlighted the real life ponzi scheme pulled off by Bernie Madoff, who was once considered one of the most noble financial geniuses in the world.

Madoff orchestrated one of the largest ponzi schemes in the world while convincing others that his business was anything but a ponzi scheme for many years. The financier eventually had his fall from glory in epic fashion, bringing down many people with him and eventually putting him in prison.

This cautious tale isn’t exactly about the stock market, but rather is one of those series that is more of a summary of exactly how far Bernie Madoff would go to keep his scheme running.

I personally know a few people who invested with him, and they did not see this coming.

Margin Call

Margin Call is a tense financial thriller set during the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. The film takes place over a 24-hour period inside a major Wall Street investment bank. It begins when a risk analyst, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), discovers that the firm’s portfolio of mortgage-backed securities is so over-leveraged that a small drop in asset value could bankrupt the company overnight. His discovery triggers a chain reaction of panic, meetings, and moral dilemmas as senior executives scramble to decide how to handle the impending disaster.

As the night unfolds, the firm’s leaders — including Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), and John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) — realize they must either hold onto the toxic assets and face collapse or sell them off immediately, dumping them onto unsuspecting clients. The decision to unload the assets, while technically saving the firm, means betraying the trust of their investors and contributing to the financial chaos that will ripple through global markets. The film captures the cold logic of corporate survival and the moral decay driving Wall Street’s greed.

Margin Call stands out for its realism and restraint — there are no heroes, just people making impossible decisions in a collapsing system. It explores themes of greed, responsibility, and the ethical blindness that allowed the financial crisis to happen. With sharp dialogue and claustrophobic tension, the movie serves as a powerful microcosm of the entire 2008 meltdown, showing that the downfall of the global economy began not with villains, but with ordinary professionals choosing profit over principle.

Stock Market & Trading Movies in Summary

The films here range from downright hilarious and wild, to dark tales about American Greed. (Which also happens to be a great television show on scammers if you haven’t seen it.) As an avid investor, I enjoy these types of films and find lessons in each one of them. If you haven’t seen any of these movies, I highly suggest you check them out!