This is the rags to riches story of a poor boy who became a trader accidentally.

“If you were gonna rob a bank, and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around? The Trading game is an outrageous white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world – from someone who survived the trading game of the City or Wall Street, recounts the allure and horror of working on Citigroup’s bond trading floor in London in early 2000s, when Gary Stevenson made millions before burning out and blew it all wide open. He didn’t spare his fellow traders by giving colourful merciless description. 

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 you 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 you 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, you own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can’t, because nobody ever leaves. Would you stick or quit, even it meant risking everything? High finance is toxic, reckless and deeply cynical.

The Trading Game: A Confession by Gary Stevenson, by Allen Lane/Crown Currency) £25.99.