Play Money

by Laura Pedersen

The author recounts her experiences as an options trader at the American Stock Exchange and describes Wall Street reactions to the October 1987 crash

253 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 1991

About the author

Laura Pedersen was born in Buffalo, New York (one of "God's frozen people") in 1965, at the height of The Folk Music Scare. (For details of misspent youth see essay at 'Is there a Nurse in the Church?'). After finishing high school in 1983 she moved to Manhattan and began working on The American Stock Exchange, a time when showing up combined with basic computation skills could be parlayed into a career. She chronicled these years in her first book, Play Money.

Having vowed to become anything but a journalist and with no conception of what a semicolon does, Laura spent the better part of the 1990s writing for The New York Times.

In 1994 President Clinton honored her as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans. She has appeared on TV shows including Oprah, Good Morning America, Primetime Live, and David Letterman.

In 2001, her first novel, Going Away Party, won the Three Oaks Prize for Fiction and was published by Storyline Press. Beginner's Luck was published by Ballantine Books in 2003 and subsequently chosen for the Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" program, Borders "Original Voices," and as a featured alternate for The Literary Guild.

Pedersen's other novels include Last Call, Heart's Desire, and The Big Shuffle.

Laura lives in New York City, teaches reading and trades Yu-Gi-Oh! cards at the Booker T. Washington Learning Center in East Harlem, and is a member of the national literary association P.E.N. (poets, essayists and novelists).

Reviews

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really 3 1/2. First part is 3, second part is 4.
After reading BuffaloGal and Buffalo Unbound, I was interested to see how Laura Pedersen’s earlier work compared. It looks like she had a coauthor. The beginning is a bit slow and not exactly sequential....we get the sense of how she got there, all the roommates and places she lived, and the night school info with a basic block of her time at the AMEX. Then the story reboots and we get a true timeline of her trading days at the AMEX. Persevere through the earlier part as now it gets interesting and Pedersen’s trademark humor shines through. This is a memoir of her time and it can be pretty raw at times. The end is satisfying and real. The heady prosperous trading days and the severe Black Monday crash are gripping to read about....and sadly in these times, we have twice headed down the same awful road and not learned the lessons of greed. It is interesting to read the few mentions of Donald Trump and then see him now as President. The book covers a 6 years span from 1983-1989. I went to college and grad school during those times, so I have some memory of it but it didn’t touch my day to day. Good for me to see it from a different perspective.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book in hard cover and enjoyed tracking the "what it takes" aspect of making it as a girl who didn't take "no" for an answer. It was a nice memoir of her time as a runner. It made it sound exciting to be so young and so determined. That said, I haven't had a piece of hard candy since I read it.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring!!!!!!