The Trading Game

A vivid, blistering memoir that takes readers inside the high-stakes drama and hubris of the trading floor, a rags-to-riches tale of Citibanks one-time most profitable trader, and why he gave it all upa Liars Poker for a new generation An incredibly important and timely book, very much of its era.Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting If you were gonna rob a bank and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around? Ever 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. At 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 youd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional geniuses and insecure bullies yet start to feel like family. Where against the odds you become the banks most profitable trader, closing deals worth nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Soon you are dreaming of numbers in your sleepand then you stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? Youre making a killing betting on millions of people becoming poorerlike 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 cant. Because nobody ever leaves. Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything? The Trading Game is an outrageous, unvarnished, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating worldthe trading floorfrom someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open.