I agree too. I find Wolf of Wall Street the better movie, and to me it comes down to the directing, and to an extent, the writing. I really liked American Hustle for the most part, but I there are times where the plot (mostly the ABScam stuff) wears down the movie to the point of confusions and the characters explaining every last detail of what they do becomes distracting and takes you out of it at times (mostly because this is a character driven movie that tries to be plot driven at times), but not enough for me to dislike the movie. I understand why critics and people like American Hustle more, mostly because it's more character driven than Wolf of Wall Street.
I love the parts in Wolf of Wall Street where Jordan starts to go into detail about how the Stock Market works, only to stop himself and say that we wouldn't understand or care. Right when he did that I told my friend "Why couldn't American Hustle do the same thing?"