It is 1985, and Bud Fox is working as a junior stockbroker at Jackson Steinem & Co. His dream is to work with his hero, Gordon Gekko, a legendary player on Wall Street. Bud's dream becomes an obsession. He bombards Gekko's office with calls, calling fifty-nine days in a row in an attempt to get an appointment, all to no avail. Thinking outside the box, Bud makes a personal visit to Gekko on his birthday, bringing him a box of Gekko's favorite contraband Cuban cigars. Gekko is impressed by Bud's boldness and audacity and finally grants him am interview. However when Bud pitches him stock picks, he fails to impress and desperately provides Gekko with some inside information about Bluestar Airlines, the company for which Bud's father is a union leader. Gekko is intrigued and tells Bud he will look at the company. Dejected, Bud returns to his office. Gekko subsequently places an order for Bluestar stock and becomes one of Bud's clients. He gives him some capital to manage, but the other stocks Bud selects lose money—suggesting that he can only pick winning stocks with the use of inside information.
Surprisingly, Gekko gives Bud a second chance and tasks him with spying on British CEO Sir Lawrence Wildman to find out what his next move will be. Bud learns that Wildman is making a bid on a steel company, and as a result of Bud's spying, Gekko makes an enormous amount of money. Wildman is forced to buy Gekko's shares from him at an inflated price in order to complete his planned take-over.
Bud is becoming wealthy and enjoys all the perks that Gekko promised, including a penthouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and a beautiful trophy girlfriend, Darien, a successful interior designer with a clutch of wealthy clients. Because Bud is making such large commission fees from his trades with Gekko, he is given a coveted corner office, and continues to maximize inside information, using his friends as straw buyers to provide both him and Gekko with more income. Although he is unaware of it, some of his trades are attracting the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bud has a new idea to pitch to Gekko which involves purchasing Bluestar Airlines and expanding it, making Bud president in the process. Bud does not manage to persuade his father to support the deal but does succeed in getting the unions to push for it. However, Bud soon learns that Gekko's plan for the company diverges from his own; Gekko will dissolve the company, sell off the company's assets and access the funds in the pension plan, leaving Bud's father and the entire Bluestar staff without jobs. Although this would make Bud an extremely rich man, Gekko's deceit angers him. He is consumed by the guilt of being the conduit that set this plan in motion and resents being an accessory to the destruction of Bluestar. His guilt is further exacerbated when his father suffers a heart attack. Bud resolves to disrupt Gekko's plan, sacrificing his apartment and girlfriend in order to do so.
Bud devises a plan to artificially drive up Bluestar stock before manipulating it back down again. He and the union presidents secretly meet with Wildman who is only too happy to avenge the steel company deal. They arrange for Wildman to purchase controlling interest in Bluestar at a very significant discount. Gekko realizes the value of his Bluestar stock is plummeting and on Bud's advice dumps his remaining interest into the company. However, when Gekko learns on the evening news that Wildman is buying the company, he realizes that the entire scheme was engineered by Bud. Bud goes to work the next day only to be arrested for insider trading.
Sometime later Bud confronts Gekko in Central Park. Gekko berates him for his role in the Bluestar deal and accuses him of ingratitude. Following their confrontation it is revealed that Bud was wearing a wire and has recorded Gekko revealing his part in insider deals. Bud turns the recording over to the authorities who tell him that he may get a lighter sentence if he helps them build a case against Gekko. Subsequently, Bud's father drives him to the courthouse to learn his fate.
