During the 2008 global financial crisis, several Wall Street investment geniuses saw through the bubble illusion before the 2007 US credit storm and made huge profits by shorting subprime CDS, becoming one of the few investment tycoons who made a lot of money in the financial disaster. Jared Venette (played by Ryan Gosling) is a Deutsche Bank agent who can turn a $4 billion order into $3.7 billion in revenue, Michael Bray (played by Christian Bale) is a one-eyed fund manager, Mark Baum (played by Steve Carell) is from a Wall Street family, and Ben Hockett (played by Brad Pitt) is a retired banker of Cornwall Capital.