Trader
The 1987 Documentary
The legendary film that follows PTJ through the months around the October 1987 crash — the single most important historical document of his early career, capturing the analog model (1987 overlaid on 1929) in live operation. PTJ later bought back the rights and pulled it from circulation; the KB registers it as a source of first importance but handles all quotation indirectly, through his own later retellings, never from the film's transcript.
“1987 that crash was 100% portfolio insurance 100%. Had they had limits which they didn't it would have been a 10% maybe 15% max but that was 100% derivatives.”
Summary
"Trader," the PBS documentary directed by Michael Glyn and broadcast in November 1987, follows Paul Tudor Jones through the months around the October 1987 crash — the period in which the analog model, 1987 overlaid on 1929, was run in live operation. It remains the single most important historical document of his early career. It is also this archive's most unusual source: PTJ later had the film withdrawn from circulation, and out of respect for that decision this KB holds no transcript and no scene description of the film itself.
What this page collects instead is (a) contemporaneous press reporting about the film's status and disappearance, and (b) PTJ's own words in later interviews recounting the events the film captured — the crash call, the 1929 parallel he had tracked for a year, and the Eli Tullis apprenticeship. All quotation below comes from that later material, never from the film.
The withdrawal did not kill the film; it turned it into Wall Street's most famous bootleg. The press record shows a repeating cycle across the 2000s and 2010s: a copy surfaces online — a seven-part YouTube upload in 2009, blog embeds, torrent-era reposts — gathers an audience of traders, and is pulled down again at the copyright holder's request, sometimes within hours. Each disappearance raised the mythology. By the 2010s the film's crash-forecast clip had become the internet's standard visual aid for analog-chart arguments, which is how a withdrawn hour of public television ended up shaping a whole genre of market commentary.
Press reporting on the film's withdrawal — a Wall Street Oasis summary from 2017, citing director Michael Glyn:
"Although the video was shown on public television in November 1987, very few copies exist. Those that do are hoarded by traders who watch the hourlong movie in the hope of gleaning possible trading tips from Jones. On the Internet, bids for the video start at $295. According to Michael Glyn, the video's director, Jones requested in the 1990s that the documentary be removed from circulation."
— Wall Street Oasis forum, October 22, 2017 (third-party press context, not the film)
Business Insider, 2011, on the film's rarity:
"There's video proof of him predicting it - on the documentary PBS filmed about him called 'Trader: The Documentary.' Unfortunately, Jones had a change of heart after the piece was filmed, and wanted it out of circulation (maybe he bought up all the copies?). It's now extremely rare and hard to find- with the VHS going for up to $155 on eBay and hoarded by traders who watch it in hopes of extracting trading tips."
— Business Insider, October 28, 2011, via the Wayback Machine (third-party press context, not the film)
The takedown mechanism in action — Market Folly's notice appended to its 2009 embed:
"Update: The link to the third party site hosting the video has been removed at the request of the copyright holder."
— Market Folly, July 2009 (third-party press context, not the film)
The public-media trade press on the 2009 resurfacing, relaying the New York Times' 2007 explanation for the withdrawal:
"Jones asked the director, Michael Glyn, to remove the film from circulation in the 1990s. Why? According to an October 2007 New York Times story, 'It is no surprise that Mr. Jones wants some distance from that version of himself. He was a bit of a cowboy, out to prove he was the best. Now, 20 years later, he sits atop the new hedge fund rich.'"
— Current, 2009, "'Trader' doc is online, then gone" (third-party press context, not the film)
New York Magazine, 2012, on the film's afterlife as recurring contraband:
"The film originally aired on PBS in 1987, then vanished when Jones hated it and reportedly bought up every VHS copy he could find. It has periodically resurfaced on the web for an hour or two at a time before being pulled down again."
— New York Magazine, "Tudor's Dynasty," August 2012 (third-party press context, not the film)
The CFA Institute's Enterprising Investor blog, 2018, on how the film's viral crash clip feeds analog-chart culture:
"They get brought up relatively frequently, often inspired by a viral clip of Paul Tudor Jones II in the 1987 documentary Trader. In the clip, a youthful Jones and his colleague Peter Borish go short right before the crash. They get a 62% monthly return to show for it, and earn the moniker 'legendary' in the process. The analog helped them generate the conviction to put on an aggressive position."
— CFA Institute Enterprising Investor, May 14, 2018 (third-party press context, not the film)
PTJ on what the 1987 crash actually was:
"1987 that crash was 100% portfolio insurance 100%. Had they had limits which they didn't it would have been a 10% maybe 15% max but that was 100% derivatives."
— PTJ recalling the documentary period in a later interview (Invest Like the Best, April 2026; machine transcript)
PTJ on the 1929 parallel — and what he did the day after the crash:
"Robin Hood happened the day after the crash and I I maybe the worst macro call of my life was thinking we were going to go into depression. I thought for sure I'd been looking at the parallels in 1929 for a year. All of a sudden it happens. I think oh my god this is a perfect replay, a perfect analog. So um I called up my friends and we began it."
— PTJ recalling the documentary period in a later interview (Invest Like the Best, April 2026; machine transcript)
PTJ on Eli Tullis, the mentor of the documentary years:
"God, he was so strong. He was really good at executing at the maximum apogee fear as well as uh greed. He was so good at smelling that because he traded hardly anything but cotton."
— PTJ recalling the documentary period in a later interview (Invest Like the Best, April 2026; machine transcript)
Key Themes
The documentary years are where the analog model was built with Peter Borish and proven in the most violent test markets have offered — PTJ's own retelling ("a perfect replay, a perfect analog") is the model's founding narrative. The period also fused his two lifelong registers: the defense first risk religion learned from Eli Tullis on the cotton floor, and the philanthropy that began the day after the crash with Robin Hood. The film's withdrawal makes it a case study in how this KB handles restricted material: the events are documented through Market Wizards and later interviews like Invest Like the Best, never through the film itself.
The afterlife reporting adds a second theme: scarcity as an amplifier. Because the film could not be licensed, streamed, or quoted, it was remembered instead — and memory, plus a bootleg clip of one chart overlay, did more for the legend than distribution ever could have. The CFA Institute's 2018 essay traces the mechanism precisely: the viral Jones–Borish clip became the reference image every analog-chart argument borrows its credibility from, to the point that a professional standards body felt the need to push back on the genre the clip inspired. The New York Times' 2007 reading of the withdrawal — distance from "a bit of a cowboy" — and New York Magazine's 2012 verdict that the film is "the urtext of modern Wall Street" are two halves of the same story: the young trader the film immortalized is exactly the archetype the older philanthropist outgrew, and suppressing the footage only made the archetype purer.
Context & Significance
The withdrawal is confirmed from the director's side: per the 2017 reporting, Glyn says Jones asked in the 1990s that the film be removed from circulation, and surviving copies became trading-cult relics, bid to $155–$295 and "hoarded by traders" looking for an edge. That scarcity is precisely why the film's mythology grew unchecked — every macro trader of the next two generations heard of it long before they could see it. For the most famous first-person account of October 19 itself — "we knew that the market was going to crash that day" — see market-wizards-1987, where the quote circulates widely from the Schwager interview conducted in the same months the film was shot.
The documented timeline of the film's suppression and leakage is now traceable decade by decade from the public record: the 1990s withdrawal request (Glyn, via Wall Street Oasis); the October 2007 New York Times explanation, relayed by the public-media trade press in 2009; the 2009 YouTube upload in seven parts and its disappearance (Current); Market Folly's embed killed by a copyright-holder request the same year; Business Insider's 2011 rarity report with eBay prices; New York Magazine's 2012 account of hour-long resurfacings; and the CFA Institute's 2018 analysis of the surviving clip's grip on market culture. Each resurfacing was small — an embed here, an upload there — but the aggregate was a continuing public argument about who owns the image of the 1987 call.
What the film captured institutionally also matters to this archive: per Market Folly's 2009 post, the cameras were inside Tudor Investment Corp "back when they were only 22 employees large and managing around $130 million" — the analog model was run by a firm the size of a startup, which is part of why the story still reads as a founding myth rather than a victory lap. PTJ has never stopped retelling the period on the record: the crash mechanics in invest-like-the-best-2026 and the crash playbook applied to the 2022 tightening in cnbc-bubble-warning-2022 are the sanctioned record. The film stays withdrawn; the lessons do not.