Biggs on Finance, Economics, and the Stock Market: Barton's Market Chronicles from the Morgan Stanley Years

Section 4

CHARACTERS AND CULTURE

This man had an ego that would fit snugly into the Temple of Dendur but he owned one of the very best long-term records in the world. He also had two Monets in his bathroom, a G-4, and his own full-time tennis pro. Treasury Secretary Rubin was said to call him from time to time. His words dropped like fat pearls of wisdom into the silence.

—Barton Biggs, June 2, 1997

It's probably only natural that an English major from Yale couldn't lead his entire professional life confined to dispensing rote investment advice. Barton Biggs had a trademark talent for literary narrative. It's a talent he used artfully to paint vivid portraits of the wacky characters comprising the culture of Wall Street. To read Biggs is to be let backstage at the zoo where a teeming ecosystem of strange and wonderful creatures go about their business in a fabricated, yet convincingly real, habitat.

Biggs seemed to maintain a certain bemused professional detachment when interacting with his peers and other market luminaries. He abhorred hubris, big egos, and narrowly informed opinions. But unlike today's bombastic pundits who enjoy the arms race of loud argument and caustic rebuttal, Biggs chose the subtler path of well-veiled sarcasm as a means of staying grounded.

Biggs drew caricatures to make his points. He used literary foils like Jim “The Trigger” who became the personification ...