Greed Is Good Again

Gordon Gekko is back.

The producer of the movie Wall Street, Edward Pressman, has reportedly agreed on a deal with News Corp.'s (NYSE:NWS) 20th Century Fox to do a sequel titled Money Never Sleeps. This time around, the character played by Oscar-winner Michael Douglas will flex his global investing muscles alongside hedge-fund players, in apparent homage to the success of fund managers like Blackstone and Fortress Investment Group (NYSE:FIG).

Crash signal?
The original movie was infamous not just for its "Greed Is Good" monologue but also for its fortuitous timing. Released immediately after the 1987 stock market crash, the film resonated with investors and financial professionals who had gone through exactly the roller-coaster ride that the film portrayed. At the time, it seemed entirely possible that the frenzy in stocks had come to an end after years of steep gains and frantic corporate activity. Of course, the crash ended up as a minor blip on the long-term chart, as the Dow has nearly quintupled from its 1987 highs.

Today, it's not hard to find interesting parallels with the 1980s. Mergers and acquisitions have become an everyday event, with private equity firms and institutional investors snapping up shares in nearly every sector of the economy. While Japan was the rising economic power of the 1980s, China has emerged to take its place in the new millennium. And battles between corporate raider Carl Icahn and Motorola (NYSE:MOT) and Imclone (NASDAQ:IMCL) are eerily reminiscent of Gekko's speech to the fictitious Teldar Paper. Even insider trading is back, with former traders at Morgan Stanley and ING allegedly colluding to buy shares of takeover targets before deals were announced. It's enough to make a superstitious person wonder whether the sequel will be the precursor to another crash.

Feeling good
Certainly, the psychology is there. Just as the 1980s bull market seemed to have the staying power of an Eveready battery, the market's virtually straight-up move over the last year has left many investors extremely confident in the five-year-old bull's longevity. And neither corporate CEOs nor Wall Street pros are apologizing for their huge pay packages. Even everyday consumers are happy, spending their way to a negative savings rate.

Time will tell whether or not the market holds off on a long-overdue correction until after the release of Money Never Sleeps. In the meantime, though, dust off your old Wall Street tape and remember the heady days of 1987 one more time.

Fool contributor Dan Caplinger can quote a disturbing amount of the Wall Street screenplay. He doesn't own shares of the companies discussed in this article. The Fool's disclosure policy wouldn't make Gordon Gekko very happy, but it's good for us.