The Trading Game

<b>Gary Stevenson </b>left his trading career behind convinced that solving inequality was the only way to repair the world economy. He has since studied for an MPhil at Oxford worked with economic think-tanks and founded a YouTube channel GarysEconomics teaching people about real-world economics. He regularly appears on television and radio and has written for the <i>Guardian </i>and OpenDemocracy among others. <p><b>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</b><br><br><i>'If you were gonna rob a bank and you saw the vault door there left open what would you do? Would you wait around?</i><br><br>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.<br><br>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 <i>day</i>. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep - and then stop sleeping at all.<br><br>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 <i>nobody ever leaves</i>.<br><br>Would you stick or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?</p> <i>The Trading Game</i> is <b>the best finance memoir I’ve ever read.</b> Gary Stevenson's tale of plundering Wall Street like some kind of cockney pirate is by turn hilarious and harrowing. A thrilling read that raises profound questions about who runs the global financial system.