‼️ The Trading Game: A Confession by Gary Stevenson ‼️
66/∞
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Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/+⭐️⭐️ (7 out of 5) (exceptionally outstanding read)
📚 Length: 352 pages
🔊Audiobook: 12 hrs and 41 min
Why you should read this book?
💡To realise why you won’t ever be able to buy your own house, because even having a great job is just not good enough.
💡To get an insight of what kind of lives the traders in bank live earning millions of Pounds a year of bonuses (like 2.3 million GBP a year).
💡To have a good laugh, because this book is funny as fuck.
I discovered Gary by watching a debate about the economy hosted by Steven Barnett. Gary has really caught my attention. Dressed up like a proper London chav, not givin’ a fuck and fighting for the poor. He reminded me a bit of Eminem (although not British) and of Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting. I immediately liked the guy and if I like somebody, I want to hear what they have to say.
During the debate, Gary mentioned he wrote a book about his life as a trader for Citi bank in London and later on in Tokio. My choice for the next book fell on The Trading Game.
I listened this book as an audiobook and there might be some reasons why you would like to listen to it as well. Gary speaks with this beautiful East London cockney accent, foreigners are not able to pick up. So listening to this book in audio might not be for everybody, esp. for the people who haven’t lived in the UK and are not familiar with British accents.
...
The reason why audio is funnier is simple. Gary is a gas man. He is great in impersonating American, Japanese and Italian accents. His narrative is also very witty. What I had to constantly laugh on was that Gary gave many characters in the book nicknames. There is the Slug (his boss in NYC), there is the Frog (American, fat and disgusting colleague), the Wizard (Gary’s English girlfriend), Tittsie (an Italian junior of Gary’s) and so on. Giving villain characters nicknames appears to be very English thing to do. Prince Harry did the same thing in his book 'Spare' where he called Queens' henchmen the Bee, the Wasp and the Fly.
Anyway, I’m sure you are anxious to hear about the story in the book. So here it goes. Gary was born in East London. He grew up very poor. Before he started to work in Citibank, he earned 12 quid per week delivering newspapers and then he was fluffing up pillows in some Sleep center store for 40 quid a week.
His father worked his entire life for the British post. They weren’t rich. Gary got expelled from the high school at certain point for selling and smoking cannabis. Regardless of this inconvenience, he was able to get to LSE (London School of Economics), which is by Garys’ words one of the most prestigious school for economics in the entire world. I agree with him. By the time I lived in the UK I think I even had some friends who went there. But I wasn’t keen to move to London, it was a rat race and although Cardiff was fucked, I thought that my chance of survival in London is very small.
Nevertheless, Gary has realised somethin’ I hasn’t: going to lectures at university does not get you a job. It does not make you an important and rich man in the future. He started to doge his classes at LSE at certain point and started to search for an internship. Which is, let me say, extremely hard. You need to network, HR puts you though all this ridiculous and fuck up rounds asking you stupid fuckin’ questions and you are competing against all of these Pakistanis who memorised the leaked questions just to get the fuckin’ spot on the summer internship. But even getting an internship does not guarantee you a job later on.
Gary has figure out he has to do it differently. He won a 'trading' card game. This got him a spot on the internship. From there he has met the people who then wanted him to work with him. They even told him that doing the compulsory 'traineeship scheme with Citibank' was his loss of time.
When Gary got on board, he started to lean and later on to trade on his own. He made shit ton of money.
But first, he takes you with him in the world of London Bankers. Their drinking and drug habits, how they did get fucked up to the point they did piss themselves in a cab. To my surprise, Gary did not seem to be keen on drugs and to take any. I say: well done. Once you get into this world, it is hard not to give in.
1st bonus: 395.000 Pound Sterling
His first major bonus was 395.000 GBP. Pause for a moment and think how much fuckin’ money it is. A lot, especially for 23 year old. That it on the top of your salary. Let’s say you have some honourable job like a nurse of a teacher and you live in fuckin’ London. You will never be able to live like a decent human being, you will neber be able to own your own fuckin’ house, you will live like a mizer and when your time comes, you will be sick, unhealthy and die. That is your real fuckin’ prospect. Or you get a job of a trader, like Gary. You will work hard, but one day, when you receive your bonus, you will just go out and buy an apartment in London with snap of your fingers.
Initially, Gary has decided not to tell anybody about his bonus, not even his back then girlfriend. At some point, his friends are talking about their bonuses, they received by working in the bank. One of them says: I got 6.000 Pounds. The second one says: I got 3.000 Pounds. The third one says: Fuck that, I got nothing. Gary, how much did you get? Silence. Ehm, 395.000 Pounds? Gary says that their friendship was never the same after that.
2nd bonus: 420.000 Pound Sterling
Gary has put on some trades in the time when Swiss National Bank came up with negative interest rates. Gary has figured out, the interest rates must eventually go form -4.5% back to 0.0%. He put on the trades, but was eventually stopped by his boss because he was in red numbers. His boss (Chuck) a Canadian who was big and fat and eventually had to leave because the doctors discovered he has a tumor in his head of a size of tennis ball, was sorry for Gary. He wanted to motivate him and even though Gary has initially lost some money, Chuck took his time to explain the management, that they cut his trades way too soon. I think Chuck was a nice chap, but even all the money in this world cannot buy you health when you neglect it for many years.
3rd bonus: 2.3 millions of Pound Sterling
The 3rd bonus was a significant milestone for Gary, because it has tuned him into a multimillionaire. I think he said it was around 2.3 million Pounds Sterling. The lesson is: It ain’t about how hard you work, but were you work. After this, Gary started to go though something what I would call a massive burnout. A very significant burnout. He does not name it in his book, but it was apparent for me what was going on. He needed some time off. But the bank would not give him time off. Nobody comes back after sabbatical. So he got moved to the Tokio Citibank desk…
Tokio, Japan
After Gary has moved to Japan, he stared to be a bit paranoid. At the beginning of the book he says that the bank never let’s you leave. They try to hold on you forever. You are too valuable by that point, you know far too much inside information and that is dangerous. Adding Gary’s burnout, he wasn’t doing well. I did go through some intensive periods of stress in my life. E.g. when I lived in the UK or in Ireland. It felt like never ending GULAG or Auschwitz to me. I was worried I’d die. I will slip and then I will die, because I did not have money to fix my mistakes. I really felt compassion for Gary at this stage of his book. He wasn’t eating. His stomach acid would get to his throat and cause a massive heartburn. (I was there as well, but I opted for the way out, my health and emotional well-being was always more important to me than some superficial world of success). At this stage, Gary could not eat, was becoming really skinny and everybody around him started to be worried about him more then he was worried about himself. He wanted to leave, but was worried the bank won’t allow him.
Eventually, he was moved to another department. He did not give a fuck about the new work. So he just started to paint and enjoy Japan in his work time. The bank was still paying him 100.000 GBP per year at this point. He would come to the office at 10:00 am, paint, print out the documents to sue the bank then he would go out for lunch and then go straight at home. This sounds like a dream job to me at this point.
The Victory and Conclusion
On the end, Gary was allowed to leave. It was when his colleague referred to as 'the Slug' was fired. Gary did not really know, if it was the real reason though, why he was allowed to leave. He then dives into the philosophical question as it is why he had won. Is it because he kept fighting and waking up every day? Was it really due to the fact the Slug has left and because he was the one keeping him in the gilded cage, the others then figured out they can let Gary leave as well? But could it be just a luck? 😉
Kaiser’s Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/+⭐️⭐️ (7 out of 5) (exceptionally outstanding read)
I think this is the exceptional book and as you can say I really liked it. I love the economics despite the fact I studied law. Gary is a hero for me who made it, but he paid a terrible price as well with his health.
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Coming Up Next:
The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI by Ray Kurzweil
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