The Trading Game
A Confession Gary Stevenson Allen Lane, £25
In the summer of 2007, just as what was then known as the “credit crunch” was beginning, I was working as one of a group of interns at Citigroup. Among this group one stood out both for his confidence and his instinctive grasp of markets. It was little surprise to me that, while I and many of my colleagues returned to our studies empty handed, he was offered a job for the following autumn and within a few years had become one of the top traders for the bank. Sixteen years on, Gary Stevenson, now an economist with a legion of fans on YouTube, has written a memoir,
The Trading Game.
The book traces Stevenson’s journey from the East End of London to the trading floors of Canary Wharf and Tokyo. After being expelled from school, he turned his life around and earned a place at the London School of Economics, where his mathematical ability and social skills helped land him that coveted internship at Citigroup. He then joined the short-term interest-rate desk, making millions thanks to two big bets – one on the immediate survival of the financial system in the aftermath of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, and another on the idea that interest rates would remain near zero for a lot longer than everyone at the time assumed. Stevenson’s meteoric rise was not sustained, however, as he became disillusioned and burned out.
Stevenson is as talented a writer as he is a trader, and his account fizzes with energy and emotion. Although captivated by the challenge of taking on the markets, he always had mixed feelings about his fellow traders, which turned into loathing when they attempted to bully him into staying on when he didn’t want to, and to walking without the bonuses he had earned. The book also touches on his theories about how the money printing that followed the global financial crisis has boosted inequality, although his accounts of these could do with a little more development. This is a moving book that should be required reading for anyone thinking of going into a career in the City.