Trading game

Gary Stevenson

"If you were going to rob a bank, and you saw the vault door open, what would you do? Would you wait?"

Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs around the streets of East London under the shadow of Canary Wharf's skyscrapers, Gary had aspired to something better. Something much grander. Then he won a competition held by a bank: "The Trading Game." And the prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the City's youngest trader. A place where you can make more money than you can imagine. Where your colleagues are demented math geniuses, overfed public schoolboys, and psychopaths on the verge of insanity, yet they begin to feel like family. Where you soon become the bank's most profitable trader, handling close to a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream up numbers in your sleep—and then stop sleeping altogether. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions getting poorer—and as the economy starts to slide off the edge of a cliff, your mind starts to slide with it? You want to stop, but you can't. Because nobody ever leaves. Will you keep going or will you quit? Even if it means risking everything? This is a raunchy, frank, and terrifying journey into the dark heart of an intoxicating world—from a survivor of the game.