These two colorful hustlers with a knack for self-promotion and disregard for ethics are the most interesting aspect of the book. But there is far too much space devoted to fluff that was barely interesting at the time (Big Dog's single-digit IQ, Janice Shell's recipes...) and is not worth preserving in print.
And there's no mention of any of the good guys, people with integrity who share investment insights online - yes, they are hard to find, but they do exist! I've been a member of Silicon Investor since 1996, I watched most of what is described in this book as it happened, plus a whole lot more. I got a true investment education from what I read there, but none of my "teachers" is mentioned in this book.
And where are the little guys who lose money by buying when Tokyo Mex and Big Dog are selling? I'd like to hear their stories.
There is a moral to the story, Emshwiller does make it clear how the internet is a boon to the sleazy side of the capital markets, and how the SEC is strangely unwilling to devote more than token resources to clean up the dirt. But I doubt many people will hurl this book down in outrage and call their congressman.
Imagine, if you will, a bright-eyed diarist among the tulip traders of 17th century Holland, a long-lived Samuel Pepys privy to the shenanigans of the South Sea Bubble, or a wit among the Wall Street brokerages as mining stocks soared and crashed in the 1890's. That's the role Emshwiller fills here with the story of some of the most influential (and colorful) characters to the new Internet trading world.
Scam Dogs isn't an all-encompassing or definitive tale of the boom market of the 1990's--that has yet to be written. It isn't about billions sloshing in the Ciscos, Intels, and Microsofts or the fortunes flushed down to cockamamy dot.coms. It's brilliant marginalia, a richly-described world of trade in stocks that are often meaningless at best or fraudulent at worst by figures far beyond the core of Wall Street. These are "marginal men" (and women) who first grabbed and understood the trading implications of the Internet precisely because they lacked the levers that established investment dealers possessed. These were the elves dancing at the leading edge, and, unlike a Salomon or Goldman Sachs swinging weight in a T-bill auction, these tiny folk can individually or in concert can kite or tank only the most rinky-dink of stocks. Such is often the unseemly stuff of revolutions. It is a revolution that government was and still is slow to grasp, as Emshwiller portrays with rich annecdote and history at the SEC. That slow grasp has meaning for us all.
Emshwiller, a writer for the staid Wall Street Journal, seems to have a natural wit and an eye for stories that often doesn't make it beyond a newsroom water cooler. He's unafraid to include himself in the tale, to admit that after a night of drinking with a trader he "wouldn't want to drive the bar stool I was sitting on," and that he was endlessly tempted by the possibility of making money from Internet trading, the very same greed and gull that drove what he was writing about.
There's wonderful material here that lies on the cutting room of too many first-rate financial journalists. Here is not just the first, easily-grasped annecdote, nor the second. But the third and fourth more subtle tale of TokyoMex in full throes of an emotional speech in which he tells fans and fellow traders "don't be schmucks," or of 400-pound fat man "Big Dog" complaining that though he is worth millions on paper at the moment, "I have no structure in my life," or of the protection-minded short-seller's guard dog who "is either having a very tense morning or appears ready to pounce," or of an ltalian Renaissance scholar and prolific poster bragging of "perfect Eric," her cleaning man from Sri Lanka that "I do have to hide my pantyhose after they're washed or he'll iron them, but that's his only fault." Such is daily life in this revolution.
This is wit and insight of a rare sort. To lodge a complaint or so of Scam Dogs: its extracts of sometimes-funny-but-inane emails are occasionally overly protracted; I'd like to have seen earlier some exploration of regulatory disinterest or neglect of Internet touting and trading (Emshwiller does it with great anecdotal familiarity mid-book and then thematically at the end.) And I'd happily have opted for a slightly more elaborate setting of the rocketing market for real-life Intels and Microsofts with real-life balance sheets making possible the fanciful dreams of undiscovered riches from companies most of us--thank heavens--have never heard of. But setting these complaints aside, I found Scam Dogs a brilliant read, a penetrating analysis, and a likely classic look at the era.
Peter Quintle, New York