In 1987, 22-year-old Jordan Belfort lands a job as a Wall Street stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild, employed under Mark Hanna. He is quickly enticed by the drug-fueled stockbroker culture and Hanna's belief that a broker's only goal is to make money for himself. Jordan loses his job following Black Monday, the largest one-day stock market drop in history after the 1929 stock market crash, and takes a job at Investor's Center, a boiler room brokerage firm on Long Island that specializes in penny stocks. He makes a small fortune thanks to his aggressive pitching style and high commissions.
Jordan befriends his neighbor Donnie Azoff, and the two start their own boiler room-styled brokerage company. They recruit Jordan's childhood friends Robbie Feinberg, Alden Kupferburg, Nicky Koskoff, Chester Ming, and Toby Welch, as well as local drug pusher Brad Bonick, all of whom Jordan trains in the art of the "hard sell," and set up the company in an abandoned auto repair shop. Jordan's tactics and salesmanship largely contribute to the success of his pump and dump scheme, in which misleading, positive statements inflate a stock's price so it can be sold at an artificially high price. When the scheme's perpetrators sell their overvalued securities, the price plummets, and those who were conned into buying at the inflated price are left with stock that is suddenly worth much less than they paid for it. To cloak this, Jordan gives the firm the respectable-sounding name of Stratton Oakmont in 1989.
Soon after, the company becomes immensely successful, moving out of the auto repair shop into a bigger office. An exposé in Forbes, which dubs Jordan "The Wolf of Wall Street" – "a sort of twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers" – causes hundreds of ambitious young financiers to flock to the company, thus causing them to move into even bigger offices.
As all this is happening, Jordan becomes immensely successful, and slides into a decadent lifestyle of prostitutes and drugs. He has an affair with buxome blonde lingerie designer Naomi Lapaglia, and when his wife Teresa finds out about this, Jordan divorces her and marries Naomi in 1991. Meanwhile, the SEC and the FBI begin investigating Stratton Oakmont.
In 1993, Jordan illegally makes $22 million in three hours after securing the IPO of Donnie's childhood friend and women's shoes designer Steve Madden, bringing him and his firm further FBI attention. To hide his money, Jordan opens a Swiss bank account with corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma, who lives in London and thus remains outside the immediate reach of American authorities. He uses Brad's Swiss-Slovenian wife Chantalle and her family, who have European passports, to smuggle the cash into Switzerland.
Donnie and Brad soon get into a heated argument in public during a money exchange, resulting in Brad's arrest as Donnie escapes. Jordan learns from his private investigator Bo Dietl that the FBI is wiretapping his phones. Fearing for his son, Jordan's father Max advises him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lie low while Jordan's lawyer negotiates a deal to keep him out of prison. In the midst of his farewell speech, Jordan cannot bear to quit and talks himself into staying, to the immense support of his friends and employees.
In 1996, Jordan, Donnie, and their wives are on a yacht trip to Italy, when they learn that Emma has died of a heart attack. Jordan proceeds to Switzerland to forge her name and save the account before going to London for the funeral. To bypass the border patrols, he orders his yacht captain Ted to sail to Monaco, but their ship capsizes in a storm. After their rescue, the plane sent to take them to Geneva is destroyed when a seagull flies into the engine; Jordan takes this as a sign from God to address his worsening drug addiction and attempts to sober up.
In 1998, Saurel and Koskoff are arrested for an unrelated crime, the former informing the FBI about Jordan as a plea bargain. Since the evidence against him is overwhelming, Jordan agrees to gather evidence from the rest of his colleagues in exchange for leniency. After having sex for the last time, Naomi tells Jordan that she is divorcing him and wants full custody of their daughter and infant son. In a cocaine-fueled rage, Jordan punches Naomi and tries to drive away with his daughter, but crashes his car in the driveway.
Later, Jordan wears a wire to work and slips a note to Donnie, warning his old partner. However, Donnie betrays Jordan by giving his note to the FBI, who arrest Jordan, before they raid and shut down Stratton Oakmont. Despite breaching his deal, Jordan receives a reduced sentence of 36 months in a minimum security prison for his testimony, and is released in 2000 after serving 22 months. After his release, Jordan makes a living hosting seminars on sales techniques.
