The Trading Game: A Confession - Gary Stevenson

#1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER - A vivid (Financial Times) rags-to-riches memoir that takes readers inside the high-stakes drama and hubris of the trading floor, a darkly funny (Guardian) tale of Citibank's one-time most profitable trader, and why he gave it all up \n \nDarker than [Liar's Poker], but if anything even more of a rollicking read . . . the clearest account I've ever read of how trading desks really work.--Felix Salmon, Axios \nIn development as a limited series - Longlisted for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year \n \nIf you were gonna rob a bank and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around? \n \nEver since he was a kid, kicking broken soccer balls on the run-down streets of East London, Gary Stevenson dreamed of something bigger. As luck would have it, he was good at numbers. \n \nAt the London School of Economics, wearing tracksuits and sneakers, Stevenson shocked his posh classmates by winning a competition called The Trading Game. The prize?: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader at Citibank. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional geniuses and insecure bullies yet start to feel like family. Where against the odds you become the bank's most profitable trader, closing deals worth nearly a trillion dollars. A day. \n \nSoon you are dreaming of numbers in your sleep--and then you stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? You're making a killing betting on millions of people becoming poorer--like the very people you grew up with. The economy is slipping off a precipice, and your own sanity starts slipping with it. You want to stop, but you can't. Because nobody ever leaves. \n \nWould you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything? \n \nThe Trading Game is an outrageous, unvarnished, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world--the trading floor--from someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open.\n