The Trading Game: A Confession
Mar 2024 · Sold by Crown Currency
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About this ebook
#1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Best Wall Street Book of 2024”—Bloomberg
A “vivid” (Financial Times) rags-to-riches memoir that takes readers inside the high-stakes drama and hubris of the trading floor, a “darkly funny” (Guardian) tale of Citibank’s one-time most profitable trader, and why he gave it all up
“Darker than [Liar’s Poker], but if anything even more of a rollicking read . . . the clearest account I’ve ever read of how trading desks really work.”—Felix Salmon, Axios
In development as a limited series • Longlisted for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year
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 you’d ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional geniuses and insecure bullies yet start to feel like family. Where against the odds you become the bank’s most profitable trader, closing deals worth nearly a trillion dollars. A day.
Soon you are dreaming of numbers in your sleep—and then you stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? You’re making a killing betting on millions of people becoming poorer—like 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 can’t. 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 world—the trading floor—from someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open.
A “vivid” (Financial Times) rags-to-riches memoir that takes readers inside the high-stakes drama and hubris of the trading floor, a “darkly funny” (Guardian) tale of Citibank’s one-time most profitable trader, and why he gave it all up
“Darker than [Liar’s Poker], but if anything even more of a rollicking read . . . the clearest account I’ve ever read of how trading desks really work.”—Felix Salmon, Axios
In development as a limited series • Longlisted for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year
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 you’d ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional geniuses and insecure bullies yet start to feel like family. Where against the odds you become the bank’s most profitable trader, closing deals worth nearly a trillion dollars. A day.
Soon you are dreaming of numbers in your sleep—and then you stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? You’re making a killing betting on millions of people becoming poorer—like 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 can’t. 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 world—the trading floor—from someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open.
#1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Best Wall Street Book of 2024”—Bloomberg
A “vivid” (Financial Times) rags-to-riches memoir that takes readers inside the high-stakes drama and hubris of the trading floor, a “darkly funny” (Guardian) tale of Citibank’s one-time most profitable trader, and why he...
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Ratings and reviews
18 reviews
Spencer Ostler
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November 23, 2025
Liars Poker for the 2008 recession. Overall, it's a great book. His assertion that no one was worried about inequality in the early 2010s is just flat wrong, though. Remember Occupy Wall Street?
hesham gebreel
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January 28, 2026
Muslims have the right to fight those who fight them. Do not wait for help from the Security Council or anyone else; liberate yourselves. Look to the battles of Badr and Hunayn in the Holy Quran. Do not turn your backs on your enemy. Islam is a religion of peace, supported by the miracles of the Holy Quran and the noble Sunnah. Islam is God's law for all people, and the call to it continues. 🇸🇩🇵🇸uyghur Muslims in China, The Rohingya Muslim in mynimar and 🇲🇲 🇨🇳🇺🇸🇮🇱
Farid Bennis
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April 14, 2024
Good read, good tempo, some clever narrative devices. Enjoyable and enlightening
About the author
Gary Stevenson, since leaving his trading career behind, has studied for an MSc at Oxford, worked with economic think tanks, and founded a YouTube channel where he teaches people about real-world economics. He regularly appears on television and radio and has written for Fortune and The Guardian.
Gary Stevenson, since leaving his trading career behind, has studied for an MSc at Oxford, worked with economic think tanks, and founded a YouTube channel where he teaches people about real-world economics. He regularly appears on television and radio and has written for Fortune and The Guardian.
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