Gary Stevenson
The Trading Game
A Confession
No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller, March 2024
An outrageous, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world – from someone who survived the trading game and then blew it
all wide open.
“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 footballs on the streets of east London in the shadow of Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger. Then he won a competition run by a bank: The Trading Game. The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you’d ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family.
Where soon you’re the bank’s most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep – and then stop sleeping at all.
But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer – and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can’t. Because nobody ever leaves.
Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?
“Compelling, intensely readable, unsettling. An unforgettable story of greed, financial madness and moral decay.” — Rory Stewart.
“Hilarious, shocking and deeply sad – often in the same sentence.” — Sunday Times.
“An incredibly important and timely book, very much of its era. The Wolf of Wall Street with a moral compass.” — Irvine Welsh.
“Astonishing, enraging, extremely funny and exquisitely sad – a magnificent exposé of the ‘masters of the universe’ whose greed imperils us all. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.” — The Secret Barrister.
“Stevenson is a sharp observer, with a gift for colourful if merciless description… His breakdown started with trading mania and ended with his exile to the Tokyo office, pleading to be allowed to leave. His bonuses had brought him torment, not freedom.” — Financial Times.
“ Gary Stevenson’s rags-to-riches memoir exposes a system where the rich can’t lose and the economy is choked by inequality… Stevenson brings alive the unease of trying to survive in the purgatorial space between being an employee and an outsider… ” — New Statesman.
