The Shark of Wall Street
The journey of a markets-obsessed engineer from India whose life has run through Cairo classrooms, holy cities, engineering hostels, rock bars and trading floors – folding love, sex, booze, movies and loud rock ’n’ roll into one escalating obsession: decoding how power, money and risk actually move. Out of that chaos comes World Trade Factory, AI, and a crypto-aware, global view of how the world trades, invests, builds wealth and navigates shocks across stocks, indices, digital assets and macro regimes.
01 · From Cairo, holy cities & rock bars to the Street
Kindergarten in Cairo under the shadow of the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Childhood stretched across Agra, Nasik, Allahabad, Gaya – temples, holy rivers, crowded trains, incense and chaos. Then Bangalore engineering hostels full of drum kits, bootleg rock, late-night movies, first real love, sex, experimentation, booze and arguments about the future. Underneath it all: an obsessive, sharpening question about who actually moves the world’s money.
Irregular curiosity in holy and noisy places
While most people watched grades and gossip, Sage was tracking the boring lines: shipping routes, deficits, currency moves, balance of payments, who owed whom. Mornings could be temple bells or school bells; nights were often guitars, clubs, cinema and conversations that went way past when they should have ended.
The question wouldn’t let go: “Who quietly sets the price of everyone’s future?” The answer clearly wasn’t just “Wall Street.” It was central banks, ports, data centers, energy flows, code, and a global system that rewards those who see it early.
From Bangalore to Vienna, New York, Austin
Work and life pull him through Bangalore, Vienna, New York, Austin – days in tech and finance, nights split between spreadsheets, scripts, live music, relationships that mattered and some that burned fast.
Travel adds more layers: Argentina, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Spain, Portugal. Markets stop being abstract charts and start becoming streets, ports, people, currency windows, empty shops and full bars. Every city adds another data point to the same thesis: the official story and the real story are rarely the same.
Love, excess & the shark waking up
The “Shark of Wall Street” isn’t a cartoon villain. It’s the version of you that emerges when love, heartbreak, desire, addiction to risk, music, film and adrenaline collide with a very sober understanding of how fragile life and money really are.
The story doesn’t sanitize the rough edges — love and sex, booze and rock ’n’ roll, late-night trading, compulsive replays of favourite films — but it doesn’t glamorize them either. They’re the accelerants poured onto an already obsessive mind, pushing him toward a simple decision: stop drifting inside other people’s systems and build a new one.
02 · A Story Built for Screen, Page & Soundtrack
The Shark of Wall Street is built as a high-velocity non-fiction book and a cinematic arc – cutting between holy cities, rock clubs, relationships, booze, travel, and real trades in modern finance. It’s not a slow burn; it’s a series of phases that keep colliding until something new has to be built.
Act I · Cairo, holy cities, engineering chaos
Pyramids and prayer, Ganges ghats and school uniforms. Then engineering in Bangalore: cramped rooms, loud speakers, friendships, love, sex, near-misses, first brushes with booze and reckless nights soundtracked by rock and movies.
Act II · Cities, careers & World Trade Factory
Bangalore, Vienna, New York, Austin. Jobs that look stable on LinkedIn, but the real story is the Google Docs, night trades, notebooks and dashboards called “World Trade Factory” before anyone else cares. Love and work both demanding more than they give; something has to give.
Act III · Taking on the Street
The fun of chaos becomes the weight of consequence. Trades are bigger. Calls go against consensus. Saying “no” to safe paths, “no” to comfortable lies, and “yes” to a life where AI, crypto, macro and human messiness all feed the same engine.
A tight, high-velocity narrative that jumps between personal scenes (love, sex, booze, music, travel), macro events, and live trades – showing how each city, relationship and bad night leaves a mark on the way risk is read and capital is deployed.
Pyramids and holy rivers. Engineering dorm corridors at 3 a.m. Neon clubs in Bangalore and Vienna. New York subways, Austin freeways. Trading screens, AI dashboards, arguments in small apartments, silence in airports after losses, rooftop conversations after big calls.
A simple question: can one person, with no safety net, no dynasty and no clean, polished origin story, really bend the trajectory of how serious capital sees the world? And what does it cost in love, health, sanity and time to even try?
03 · World Trade Factory: The Engine
Underneath the narrative is a real platform: World Trade Factory – an AI-augmented, macro-intelligence and investing ecosystem built to read the world differently and help serious capital act on it across equities, indexes, sectors, commodities, crypto, digital assets and global trade-driven strategies.
Macro & trade intelligence
Global trade flows, FDI, credit conditions, policy shifts, and real-economy indicators stitched into one living view of where the world is actually heading — and what that means for stock markets, wealth allocation and portfolio construction.
AI & LLM research stack
AI models that digest filings, earnings calls, tariff updates and macro reports – surfacing what’s changing, what’s breaking, and what no one is pricing yet across stocks, sectors, countries, crypto and other asset classes.
Built by an outsider
No committee. No legacy stack. Just a founder designing an engine he wishes existed when he started out: transparent, sharp, and relentlessly global in how it reads wealth, finance, risk and opportunity – informed by everything from holy sites and hostel nights to trading floors and film scripts.
04 · How People Describe It
The reactions so far aren’t about hype – they’re about recognition. People see a story they don’t usually get: no inherited edge, no safety net, just compounding work in markets, relationships, art, and the messy reality of trying to build something new.
“It feels like if Moneyball, a macro journal, a travel diary and a coming-of-age rock film were smashed together around one person’s obsession with trade and markets.”
“Most finance stories start inside the system. This one starts far outside of it – in Cairo, holy cities, engineering chaos and clubs – and that’s exactly why it’s interesting.”
“It doesn’t glamorize anything. It shows the fun, the damage, the doubt, the addiction to action, and the small, disciplined decisions that eventually become something nobody can ignore.”
05 · Screenplay & Direction · Andrew Johnson
To bring this story to the screen, Andrew Johnson is attached to develop the screenplay and direct the cinematic adaptation of The Shark of Wall Street – pairing the world trade and macro story with an eye for grounded, character-driven filmmaking that doesn’t flinch from love, sex, booze, rock ’n’ roll and the cost of ambition.
Exploring humanity one frame at a time
Andrew is a working indie director, producer, and screenwriter whose work is centered on humanity, struggle, and meaning. His filmmaking journey began in the Pacific Northwest, writing and directing short films, and continued through his time at Michigan State University, where he recently graduated.
There, he directed the senior capstone and his latest award-winning film, “Orientation” (2025) – a project that showcased his ability to balance grounded realism, character tension, and emotional payoff.
Current work: America’s backbone
Andrew is currently developing a docuseries on blue-collar workers in America, following the lives of two vibrant personalities in the moving and storage industry. The series focuses on the deep, often unseen stories of the people who keep the country running.
That instinct — to explore real people, real stakes, and the quiet weight of work — is a natural fit for a story about one person taking on global markets with all the mess and beauty of a real life attached.
Why this story, why now
Andrew grew up loving films like Jaws and Star Wars, with a lifelong goal to direct meaningful, original features that leave a mark. He’s drawn to stories where ordinary-seeming people are thrown into extraordinary systems — and have to fight for agency.
The Shark of Wall Street gives him a canvas that blends global macro stakes with intimate, personal evolution: Cairo classrooms, holy cities, engineering chaos, love and heartbreak, booze and recovery, AI and trade, and the emotional cost of refusing to follow the script.
Screenwriting range
Andrew’s script portfolio spans fantasy, drama, gritty period action, sports drama, supernatural thriller, and coming-of-age sci-fi, including projects such as:
- Land of Aura: Energy of the Past – Fantasy adventure
- Lone – Last man on earth drama
- Aborigine – Gritty tournament-to-the-death period piece
- Salted Wounds – Trauma & aspiration through a magician
- Heart of the Wolf – Coming-of-age sports drama
- Beyond the Garden – Supernatural thriller teleplay
That range — from intimate drama to mythic stakes — is what he brings to the adaptation of The Shark of Wall Street: grounded yet cinematic, global yet deeply personal.
06 · Book / Film & Collaboration
If you’re a publisher, producer, investor or collaborator who sees the potential in this story and the platform behind it, this is the line to reach Andrew directly.
Direct contact · Andrew Johnson
Email: filmandrew1@gmail.com / sage@worldtradefactory.com
Phone: 425-440-1603(Andrew) / 480-280-2924(Sage)
Andrew is actively looking to work with agents, producers, and filmmakers on projects that have something real to say about how people live, love, work, crash, recover and navigate systems much bigger than themselves.
For investors & operators
If you’re more interested in the World Trade Factory platform than the book or film, mention “World Trade Factory” in your message and include a line about your mandate or the kind of capital / business decisions you’re making — family office, fund, treasury, corporate strategy, trading desk or personal wealth.
Serious interest in the platform, macro intelligence, or potential collaboration around data, investing strategy or trading research will be routed appropriately.