cover image Play Money

Play Money

Laura Pederson, F. Peter Model. Crown Publishers, $20 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-517-58227-5

Pedersen, who in 1984 at age 18 began her Wall Street career as an AMEX options clerk, here attributes her success as an index trader (she became a millionaire by age 22) to her ability to ``scream loud, jump high, think fast and count without using her fingers.'' Along with a hilarious account of her personal adventures, this incisive, anecdotal narrative, written with freelancer Model, affords a front-line view of market operations and what it was like to risk vast sums daily under the physically hazardous conditions of the madhouse options trading floor during the heady days of the ``Roaring Eighties.'' Now a traveling lecturer, Pederson claims that global electronic trading will soon replace floor brokers and traders. (May)