Bud is a stockbroker for a small brokerage office. His job is to main the phones and try to solicit new clients. He dreams of being the one placing the stock trades rather than just the one processing them in a most menial fashion. Bud idolizes a wealthy entrepreneur who made his money in stocks named Gordon Gekko. Bud is so determined to meet Gordon that he calls his office 40 days in a row before he is finally allowed to meet with Gordon briefly. Bud goes the extra mile to impress Gordon. Slowly but surely Bud is sucked into using illegal methods to obtain inside information about companies so that Gordon can know beforehand about the major news that pushes individual stocks up and down. Bud becomes Gordon's right hand man and handles all of Gekko's portfolio at one point. Gekko uses Bud to try to gain control of Blue Star Airlines a company Bud's father has worked at for years. After Bud sells the airline's workers on a buyout, Bud finds out about Gekko's plans to sell off the entire company piece by piece and lay off everyone. Bud fights back and after an active day of stock trading, Gekko loses lots of money on his planned Blue Star takeover.

Carl Fox is a man that has spent his whole life working for a single company, Blur Star airlines. When his son, Bud spots an opportunity to make money with Blue Star Airlines, Carl gets into a fight with his son for the trust of the people at Bluestar. Carl is used as a dupe to try to convince workers to work for less pay to allow Bluestar to be profitable after a takeover organized by Gordon Gekko. Gekko desires to sell the whole company off piece by piece but he needed Carl to get support from the employees and Board of Directors to enable his planned takever.