The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson A Confession
What's it about?
The Trading Game (2024) is a gripping account of the author’s journey from the streets o f East London to becoming the youngest and most profitable trader in the city, handling nearly a trillion dollars daily. It reveals the dark reality of a banking culture where success means betting on economic collapse, where winning feels like losing, and quitting risks everything.
In a dimly lit Tokyo ramen restaurant, a young trader faces down his boss across the table. “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people,” the boss says, his oversized smile never wavering. “We can make life very difficult for you.”
How did Gary Stevenson, a working-class kid from East London find himself in a confrontation with one of the world's most powerful banks? He tried to quit. But why? Why, after making millions before his thirtieth birthday, was he desperate to escape the industry that made him rich?
In this lesson, we’ll follow Stevenson’s meteoric rise through the trading floors of Citibank and his dramatic battle to break free from their golden handcuffs. His story reveals not just the adrenaline-fueled world of billion-dollar trades, but disturbing truths about the systems we all live within.
Let’s begin.
At the end of the street where Gary grew up in East London, a lamp post and telegraph pole formed makeshift football goals. Looking between them, he could see the towers of Canary Wharf – London’s financial district – glowing in the distance.
Growing up in working-class Ilford with a postal worker father, Gary developed an intense relationship with money early. As a child, he once spent what felt like hours searching for a dropped pound coin, crawling under cars and scrabbling in drains. By twelve, he was selling candies at school; by thirteen, delivering newspapers for £13 a week. By sixteen, his sales business had become more profitable and more illicit – leading to his expulsion from high school for selling cannabis.
Despite this setback, Gary’s talent for mathematics earned him a place at the prestigious London School of Economics. Though surrounded by children of Russian oligarchs and Chinese industrialists, Gary was determined to find his path into finance. His opportunity came when a fellow student told him about “The Trading Game” – a Citibank competition where the winners received internships.
The game simulated trading through betting on numbered cards. While other students meticulously calculated expected returns, Gary observed their predictable strategies and exploited them, making risk-free profits by buying low from one player and immediately selling high to another.
In the national finals, Gary drew the worst possible card – a -10. Despite this disadvantage, he confidently bluffed, aggressively selling at high prices. As the final rounds of the competition progressed, each card revealed was improbably high. Gary’s losses were massive. Yet surprisingly, the head trader Caleb announced him as the winner. They had deliberately rigged the final game to test how the players handled pressure. Gary had backed himself rather than backing down – exactly what they wanted to see in a trader. Gary got the jo b.
On his first day at Citibank’s towering skyscraper, Gary arrived on the STIRT (Short Term Interest Rates Trading) desk. Unlike the polished credit traders from elite backgrounds, these traders were a diverse group. There was Johnny, a hyperactive Australian who never sat down; Rupert, the stern Head of Euro Rates; and Bill, a taciturn trader from Liverpool who kept to himself.
With no clear instructions, Gary was expected to create his own role. He set out to win over the mysterious but respected Bill, arriving at 5:45 am to place a fresh cappuccino on his desk before he arrived. After several mornings of this ritual, Bill finally acknowledged him: “Thanks Gal. Come sit with me when you come back.”
On the final day of his internship, Gary was tasked with coordinating lunch delivery for the entire trading floor – a seemingly impossible task requiring hundreds of individual orders. Recalling his time delivering papers in the rain, he tackled it head on.
After successfully completing this final test, Caleb called out across the desk: “You got a passport?” When Gary confirmed he did, Caleb smiled and said, “Go home and get it. You're going skiing.” It was an unexpected invitation into the traders’ inner circle and a permanent role; his path toward the career in finance he’d glimpsed from between goalposts in Ilford.
Gary’s early introduction to the trading floor was the beginning of a journey – a journey that would lead him through the heart of the 2008 financial crisis and transform him from an eager young graduate to someone unrecognizable, even to himself.
His first year as a junior trader found him navigating complex relationships with the desk’s personalities – learning to avoid Rupert’s volatility, appreciating Bill’s taciturn wisdom, and absorbing Spengler’s odd but effective trading strategies.
In September 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global economy with it. It sent shockwaves through the financial system, but the trading desk didn’t panic; they celebrated. The crisis created unprecedented opportunities for profit as liquidity dried up and spreads – the gap between bidding and selling offers – widened dramatically. While the world economy teetered on the brink, Gary watched his colleagues make millions leveraging the chaos. The lesson? Disaster means opportunity for traders.
The darker side of trading culture revealed itself soon after. Rupert discovered Spengler had secretly transferred $3 million from Rupert’s trading account to his own. Spengler’s temporary removal from the desk taught Gary a crucial lesson delivered by Bill: “Cover Your Arse” – a mantra that would guide his approach to risk and accountability throughout his career.
At just 29 years old, head trader Caleb announced his retirement. He planned to build a house in California and never work again. Though he would eventually return, Caleb’s news was for Gary a glimpse at a future he’d never imagined. If Caleb could walk away so young with life-changing wealth, why couldn’t he?
Opportunity knocked when Chuck Mathieson, a giant Canadian who traded Russian rubles, took over from Caleb as desk head. During their first awkward meeting, as Chuck flipped through a Sports Illustrated swimsuit magazine ogling the models, Gary picked up on his uncertainty about the desk’s structure. When Chuck innocently asked what he did on the desk, Gary seized the moment. The lie emerged effortlessly: “I'm the Swiss franc trader, Chuck.” He had effectively given himself a promotion. That night, he executed his first billion-dollar trade, lending US dollars for a year in Swiss francs.
It was the first step in a meticulous plan. This plan had been carefuly documented on two identical sheets of paper. On each, Gary had written “12 MILLION DOLLARS” followed by five specific trades through which he would achieve this target. One sheet stayed in his desk drawer at work; the other in his underwear drawer at home. This wasn’t just a goal – it was an obsession, a formula he would follow with precision.
By year-end, Gary had precisely hit his goal, becoming the first junior trader in the bank's history to make over $10 million in their debut year. But it was bonus day that truly changed him. Chuck slid a paper across the desk showing £395,000 – nearly four times what Gary had expected. Gary was so overwhelmed he had to leave the building. Sitting in a small park between skyscrapers, he thought about his father who had worked at the Post Office for 35 years earning just £20,000 annually, about the kids he'd grown up with in Ilford, and about the ease with which he’d made this fortune.
In that cold January sunlight, something fundamental shifted. If he could make £395,000 on his first try, what could stop him from making millions? From that point on, Gary decided, “It was bank robbery.” He was out to make every penny he could.
Bill, the veteran trader from Liverpool, became Gary’s natural mentor on the STIRT desk. Beneath his gruff exterior, Bill possessed remarkable trading instincts, teaching Gary to avoid what he called “pig on pork” – making the same trade multiple times across different currencies. Bill constructed strategic positions designed to profit regardless of market movements.
Meanwhile, Gary struggled with whether to tell anyone about his gigantic bonus. One night at his girlfriend’s apartment, he finally revealed the amount. Her reaction was unsettling: her face became still as if in a trance. Her eyes grew enormous, wide irises staring through him. Immediately, Gary wished he hadn’t told her. They separated a few months later.
His childhood friends reacted similarly. During a living room gaming session, his friends – who themselves worked in banking and finance – asked him whether he’d gotten a bonus. After a long pause, he spoke the words: “I got three hundred and ninety-five thousand pounds.” The room fell silent; the only sound, a PlayStation controller bouncing as it dropped to the floor. His friendships were never quite the same.
Then came disaster. On a quiet evening watching Champions League football with an old friend, Gary received a call. It was from a man he calls “the Frog,” a senior New York trader who suggested an opportunity in Swiss francs. Gary committed to a $200 million position based on this tip.
Days later, the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly announced they would lend Swiss francs at negative 4.5% interest – an unprecedented move that devastated Gary’s position. As losses mounted to $8 million within a week, Gary doubled down rather than cutting his losses. His position was eventually forcibly closed at a $4.2 million loss, only for the market to reverse shortly afterward – proving his analysis correct, but too late.
The experience taught Gary his two fundamental trading rules: “Be right in the end” and “Be alive at the end.” The first meant ensuring your market analysis is on point; the second meant surviving long enough for that rightness to matter.
Remarkably, Gary clawed his way back from being $4.2 million “in the red.” He arrived at work before anyone else and expanded his expertise to US dollar markets. By year-end, he had recovered to a positive $4.5 million position. While traveling in Singapore, he received news of his bonus for the year: £420,000.
In 2011, upon returning from Singapore with his second bonus, Gary found his job turned upside down. The STIRT desk had been physically relocated from the window to the center of the trading floor – a move symbolic of deeper changes. His mentor Bill was moving into semi-retirement, and Gary was assigned as junior euro trader rather than inheriting Bill’s sterling portfolio.
His new boss was none other than “the Frog” – the very same New York trader who’d recommended the disastrous Swiss francs trade. By now it was clear he had set Gary up to take the fall, dumping his own risky position onto Gary before the market collapsed. Their work relationship was antagonistic from the start. Feeling the resentment, Gary found it nearly unbearable sitting next to his new boss.
The junior euro position was mixed; potentially highly profitable but demanding, requiring hundreds of short-term trades, where other positions might need just a handful. Gary approached this challenge with unrelenting intensity, arriving before dawn in cycling clothes that he increasingly didn’t bother to change out of.
He continued developing his distinctive trading philosophy. The key to success, he believed, wasn’t just being right – it was being right when others were wrong. While other people bet on economic recovery, Gary recognized that growing inequality meant interest rates would remain low indefinitely – a contrarian position that proved devastatingly accurate.
Again and again, Gary found himself making profit amidst the misfortune of others. When the 2011 Japan earthquake struck, killing thousands, Gary made $11 million. Later that year, as European countries like Greece, Spain, and Italy spiraled into debt crises, Gary’s positions yielded even greater profits. The European Central Bank’s desperate move to offer unlimited loans at 1% created chaotic market conditions that he navigated with remarkable skill, trading nearly a trillion euros a day.
Despite making over $35 million for the bank that year, Gary’s relationship with his boss “the Frog” declined. When the Frog suggested Gary might not get his expected bonus, Gary began interviewing with rival banks, strategically leaving their business cards on the Frog’s desk as leverage. He eventually secured approximately $2.45 million – the standard 7% of his profits.
Gary’s personal life reflected his growing alienation. He purchased an expensive apartment overlooking a marina but left it bare save for a mattress and TV.
The breaking point came during a confrontation with the Frog. As his boss screamed at him over a missed meeting, Gary looked down at his shoes. His sneakers had worn away at the corners where his little toes were and he could see his socks underneath – bright red socks dotted with the logo of his favorite football team, Leyton Orient. He had become so disconnected from his everyday life that he, a millionaire trader, hadn’t noticed he’d been walking around with holes in his shoes.
“Boss, I don't think I can do it anymore,” he said suddenly. “I think I need to quit.”
To keep him from quitting, Citibank eventually offered Gary a sabbatical, working in Tokyo under his former boss Caleb. On his final day in London, Gary walked off the trading floor to applause from colleagues but never turned back to acknowledge them. His gaze was already fixed on a future away from the world of trading.
Gary had stumbled onto a secret about money. Not the kind of secret that makes you rich – though it had certainly done that – but one that made him see the world differently. While CNBC talking heads debated whether the recovery would be V-shaped or U-shaped, Gary had bet billions that it wouldn’t happen at all. The global economy, he believed, wasn’t caught in a temporary downturn. It was caught in a trap – and still is.
Gary understood that the economy couldn’t recover when spending power was being permanently drained from the middle class. The central banks would be forced to keep rates at historic lows to prevent total collapse. In Gary’s view, the economic establishment – central bankers, academic economists, and Wall Street analysts – clung to models that treat economic downturns as temporary cyclical problems, rather than permanent structural ones. Their forecasts repeatedly predict interest rate increases and returns to normality that never materialize.
Why? The central banks pump money into the financial system, ostensibly to stimulate growth. But this money never reaches ordinary people who might actually spend it. Instead, it inflates asset prices – stocks, bonds, real estate – owned predominantly by the already wealthy.
Gary saw his childhood friends back in Ilford, where the rusty lamp posts that once served as football goals still stand, increasingly devote their paychecks to rent and mortgage payments on ever-more-expensive housing. The money flows upward – from tenant to landlord, borrower to lender – through financial plumbing that Gary understood intimately. He had watched the process unfold on his Bloomberg terminal, in real time, like watching a heist in progress – one nobody else seems to notice.
So Gary made millions betting interest rates would stay near zero. When people have less and less money to spend after housing costs, the economy can’t grow. When the economy can’t grow, rates can’t rise. It’s that simple.
The result is a peculiar paradox: One kid from East London makes enough money by twenty-six to retire forever, simply by correctly anticipating that his neighbors and schoolmates will keep getting poorer.
As he flew eastward toTokyo, Gary carried this knowledge with him like contraband – a theory that explained both his meteoric rise and the gnawing emptiness that accompanied it. He was beating a game that, increasingly, he felt shouldn't be played at all.
After landing in Tokyo, Gary found himself in a surreal corporate world unlike anything he’d experienced in London. The Tokyo trading floor was eerily quiet, with low ceilings and an atmosphere of manufactured busyness. His Japanese trader colleagues had perfected the art of appearing occupied while doing almost nothing – spending hours creating spreadsheets only to delete and restart them. As one junior trader confided to Gary: “Don’t ever finish work. You finish work, you get more work to do.”
Gary was placed on the STIRT desk between Hisa, a micromanaging supervisor who constantly hovered, and an Australian junior trader. With interest rates in Japan essentially dead and minimal trading required, Gary had nothing to do. He began sleeping at his desk when Hisa was away and spending hours studying Japanese kanji – anything to fill the emptiness of his days.
Despite the change of pace, Gary’s physical decline accelerated rapidly. His weight dropped to 120 pounds. He developed acid reflux that required constant medication. And his sleep became so disrupted he often ran around the Emperor’s Palace at 3 AM. The meaninglessness of his work and the isolation from home pushed him, finally, towards a breaking point.
Six months into his Tokyo assignment, Gary informed Caleb he wanted to quit and work for charity – a move that, under a little-known contract clause, would allow him to keep his deferred compensation of approximately £1.5 million.
Caleb initially seemed understanding. But two weeks later, during a tense dinner at a ramen restaurant, Caleb transformed from mentor to intimidator. Looking directly into Gary’s eyes over steaming bowls, he threatened: “Sometimes bad things happen to good people. We can make life very difficult for you.” The threat reminded Gary of neighborhood drug dealers from his childhood – powerful men making implicit threats while maintaining plausible deniability.
This confrontation triggered Gary’s decision to fight. He secured medical leave for stress and anxiety, both a strategic move and an escape from the toxic environment. When bank management realized they couldn’t easily force him out, they subjected him to an endless series of meetings with rotating combinations of managers – alternating between intimidation tactics and false encouragement.
After his medical leave expired, the bank reassigned Gary to “Business Management,” giving him meaningless spreadsheet work in a depressing office by the recycling bins. As pressure mounted, the bank canceled his housing allowance and formally rejected his application to leave for charity work. Gary responded by sending bizarre emails to senior executives, including the CEO – some containing Mormon scripture, others featuring cryptic threats about exposing the bank’s behavior.
This unorthodox strategy coincided with the sudden firing of a senior manager. Shortly after, HR called Gary to a final meeting. They unexpectedly agreed to release him with his full deferred compensation – a surprising victory in a battle that seemed hopeless. Perhaps it was Gary’s erratic emails that made them question his stability and potential liability; maybe his persistence has simply exhausted them. He would never find out.
On his final day, Gary quietly departed the trading floor, for the last time, to zero fanfare.
Years later, in a village pub, Gary’s former colleague Billy revealed the aftermath. The day Gary left, during a monthly conference call with STIRT traders from around the world, Caleb made an announcement: “Today was Gary Stevenson's last day at Citibank.” After an uncomfortable silence, someone asked, “So who won then? Gary, or Citibank?” There was a pause, a click as Caleb unmuted his phone: “Gary won.”
Billy heard the sound of traders worldwide simultaneously muting their phones as the call erupted in laughter.
The main takeaway of this lesson to The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson is that modern finance has become disconnected from economic reality, rewarding traders who bet against shared prosperity.
Stevenson’s journey from working-class Ilford through the gleaming towers of finance reveals how the industry’s most profitable wagers are often bets on inequality and diminishing opportunities for the middle class.
His troubling insight – that central banks would keep interest rates near zero indefinitely because average people were becoming permanently poorer – made him millions even as it hollowed him from within.
In the end, his battle to escape the system with his deferred compensation intact mirrored his trading philosophy: survive long enough for your analysis to be proven right.
Today, Stevenson uses his insider knowledge to advocate for economic equality, running his YouTube channel GarysEconomics and contributing to policy debates in major media outlets.
His story illuminates not just one trader’s rise and fall, but a rigged financial system designed to funnel wealth upward while leaving ordinary people behind.
The Trading Game (2024) is a gripping account of the author’s journey from the streets o f East London to becoming the youngest and most profitable trader in the city, handling nearly a trillion dollars daily. It reveals the dark reality of a banking culture where success means betting on economic collapse, where winning feels like losing, and quitting risks everything.
In a dimly lit Tokyo ramen restaurant, a young trader faces down his boss across the table. “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people,” the boss says, his oversized smile never wavering. “We can make life very difficult for you.”
How did Gary Stevenson, a working-class kid from East London find himself in a confrontation with one of the world's most powerful banks? He tried to quit. But why? Why, after making millions before his thirtieth birthday, was he desperate to escape the industry that made him rich?
In this lesson, we’ll follow Stevenson’s meteoric rise through the trading floors of Citibank and his dramatic battle to break free from their golden handcuffs. His story reveals not just the adrenaline-fueled world of billion-dollar trades, but disturbing truths about the systems we all live within.
Let’s begin.
At the end of the street where Gary grew up in East London, a lamp post and telegraph pole formed makeshift football goals. Looking between them, he could see the towers of Canary Wharf – London’s financial district – glowing in the distance.
Growing up in working-class Ilford with a postal worker father, Gary developed an intense relationship with money early. As a child, he once spent what felt like hours searching for a dropped pound coin, crawling under cars and scrabbling in drains. By twelve, he was selling candies at school; by thirteen, delivering newspapers for £13 a week. By sixteen, his sales business had become more profitable and more illicit – leading to his expulsion from high school for selling cannabis.
Despite this setback, Gary’s talent for mathematics earned him a place at the prestigious London School of Economics. Though surrounded by children of Russian oligarchs and Chinese industrialists, Gary was determined to find his path into finance. His opportunity came when a fellow student told him about “The Trading Game” – a Citibank competition where the winners received internships.
The game simulated trading through betting on numbered cards. While other students meticulously calculated expected returns, Gary observed their predictable strategies and exploited them, making risk-free profits by buying low from one player and immediately selling high to another.
In the national finals, Gary drew the worst possible card – a -10. Despite this disadvantage, he confidently bluffed, aggressively selling at high prices. As the final rounds of the competition progressed, each card revealed was improbably high. Gary’s losses were massive. Yet surprisingly, the head trader Caleb announced him as the winner. They had deliberately rigged the final game to test how the players handled pressure. Gary had backed himself rather than backing down – exactly what they wanted to see in a trader. Gary got the jo b.
On his first day at Citibank’s towering skyscraper, Gary arrived on the STIRT (Short Term Interest Rates Trading) desk. Unlike the polished credit traders from elite backgrounds, these traders were a diverse group. There was Johnny, a hyperactive Australian who never sat down; Rupert, the stern Head of Euro Rates; and Bill, a taciturn trader from Liverpool who kept to himself.
With no clear instructions, Gary was expected to create his own role. He set out to win over the mysterious but respected Bill, arriving at 5:45 am to place a fresh cappuccino on his desk before he arrived. After several mornings of this ritual, Bill finally acknowledged him: “Thanks Gal. Come sit with me when you come back.”
On the final day of his internship, Gary was tasked with coordinating lunch delivery for the entire trading floor – a seemingly impossible task requiring hundreds of individual orders. Recalling his time delivering papers in the rain, he tackled it head on.
After successfully completing this final test, Caleb called out across the desk: “You got a passport?” When Gary confirmed he did, Caleb smiled and said, “Go home and get it. You're going skiing.” It was an unexpected invitation into the traders’ inner circle and a permanent role; his path toward the career in finance he’d glimpsed from between goalposts in Ilford.
Gary’s early introduction to the trading floor was the beginning of a journey – a journey that would lead him through the heart of the 2008 financial crisis and transform him from an eager young graduate to someone unrecognizable, even to himself.
His first year as a junior trader found him navigating complex relationships with the desk’s personalities – learning to avoid Rupert’s volatility, appreciating Bill’s taciturn wisdom, and absorbing Spengler’s odd but effective trading strategies.
In September 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global economy with it. It sent shockwaves through the financial system, but the trading desk didn’t panic; they celebrated. The crisis created unprecedented opportunities for profit as liquidity dried up and spreads – the gap between bidding and selling offers – widened dramatically. While the world economy teetered on the brink, Gary watched his colleagues make millions leveraging the chaos. The lesson? Disaster means opportunity for traders.
The darker side of trading culture revealed itself soon after. Rupert discovered Spengler had secretly transferred $3 million from Rupert’s trading account to his own. Spengler’s temporary removal from the desk taught Gary a crucial lesson delivered by Bill: “Cover Your Arse” – a mantra that would guide his approach to risk and accountability throughout his career.
At just 29 years old, head trader Caleb announced his retirement. He planned to build a house in California and never work again. Though he would eventually return, Caleb’s news was for Gary a glimpse at a future he’d never imagined. If Caleb could walk away so young with life-changing wealth, why couldn’t he?
Opportunity knocked when Chuck Mathieson, a giant Canadian who traded Russian rubles, took over from Caleb as desk head. During their first awkward meeting, as Chuck flipped through a Sports Illustrated swimsuit magazine ogling the models, Gary picked up on his uncertainty about the desk’s structure. When Chuck innocently asked what he did on the desk, Gary seized the moment. The lie emerged effortlessly: “I'm the Swiss franc trader, Chuck.” He had effectively given himself a promotion. That night, he executed his first billion-dollar trade, lending US dollars for a year in Swiss francs.
It was the first step in a meticulous plan. This plan had been carefuly documented on two identical sheets of paper. On each, Gary had written “12 MILLION DOLLARS” followed by five specific trades through which he would achieve this target. One sheet stayed in his desk drawer at work; the other in his underwear drawer at home. This wasn’t just a goal – it was an obsession, a formula he would follow with precision.
By year-end, Gary had precisely hit his goal, becoming the first junior trader in the bank's history to make over $10 million in their debut year. But it was bonus day that truly changed him. Chuck slid a paper across the desk showing £395,000 – nearly four times what Gary had expected. Gary was so overwhelmed he had to leave the building. Sitting in a small park between skyscrapers, he thought about his father who had worked at the Post Office for 35 years earning just £20,000 annually, about the kids he'd grown up with in Ilford, and about the ease with which he’d made this fortune.
In that cold January sunlight, something fundamental shifted. If he could make £395,000 on his first try, what could stop him from making millions? From that point on, Gary decided, “It was bank robbery.” He was out to make every penny he could.
Bill, the veteran trader from Liverpool, became Gary’s natural mentor on the STIRT desk. Beneath his gruff exterior, Bill possessed remarkable trading instincts, teaching Gary to avoid what he called “pig on pork” – making the same trade multiple times across different currencies. Bill constructed strategic positions designed to profit regardless of market movements.
Meanwhile, Gary struggled with whether to tell anyone about his gigantic bonus. One night at his girlfriend’s apartment, he finally revealed the amount. Her reaction was unsettling: her face became still as if in a trance. Her eyes grew enormous, wide irises staring through him. Immediately, Gary wished he hadn’t told her. They separated a few months later.
His childhood friends reacted similarly. During a living room gaming session, his friends – who themselves worked in banking and finance – asked him whether he’d gotten a bonus. After a long pause, he spoke the words: “I got three hundred and ninety-five thousand pounds.” The room fell silent; the only sound, a PlayStation controller bouncing as it dropped to the floor. His friendships were never quite the same.
Then came disaster. On a quiet evening watching Champions League football with an old friend, Gary received a call. It was from a man he calls “the Frog,” a senior New York trader who suggested an opportunity in Swiss francs. Gary committed to a $200 million position based on this tip.
Days later, the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly announced they would lend Swiss francs at negative 4.5% interest – an unprecedented move that devastated Gary’s position. As losses mounted to $8 million within a week, Gary doubled down rather than cutting his losses. His position was eventually forcibly closed at a $4.2 million loss, only for the market to reverse shortly afterward – proving his analysis correct, but too late.
The experience taught Gary his two fundamental trading rules: “Be right in the end” and “Be alive at the end.” The first meant ensuring your market analysis is on point; the second meant surviving long enough for that rightness to matter.
Remarkably, Gary clawed his way back from being $4.2 million “in the red.” He arrived at work before anyone else and expanded his expertise to US dollar markets. By year-end, he had recovered to a positive $4.5 million position. While traveling in Singapore, he received news of his bonus for the year: £420,000.
In 2011, upon returning from Singapore with his second bonus, Gary found his job turned upside down. The STIRT desk had been physically relocated from the window to the center of the trading floor – a move symbolic of deeper changes. His mentor Bill was moving into semi-retirement, and Gary was assigned as junior euro trader rather than inheriting Bill’s sterling portfolio.
His new boss was none other than “the Frog” – the very same New York trader who’d recommended the disastrous Swiss francs trade. By now it was clear he had set Gary up to take the fall, dumping his own risky position onto Gary before the market collapsed. Their work relationship was antagonistic from the start. Feeling the resentment, Gary found it nearly unbearable sitting next to his new boss.
The junior euro position was mixed; potentially highly profitable but demanding, requiring hundreds of short-term trades, where other positions might need just a handful. Gary approached this challenge with unrelenting intensity, arriving before dawn in cycling clothes that he increasingly didn’t bother to change out of.
He continued developing his distinctive trading philosophy. The key to success, he believed, wasn’t just being right – it was being right when others were wrong. While other people bet on economic recovery, Gary recognized that growing inequality meant interest rates would remain low indefinitely – a contrarian position that proved devastatingly accurate.
Again and again, Gary found himself making profit amidst the misfortune of others. When the 2011 Japan earthquake struck, killing thousands, Gary made $11 million. Later that year, as European countries like Greece, Spain, and Italy spiraled into debt crises, Gary’s positions yielded even greater profits. The European Central Bank’s desperate move to offer unlimited loans at 1% created chaotic market conditions that he navigated with remarkable skill, trading nearly a trillion euros a day.
Despite making over $35 million for the bank that year, Gary’s relationship with his boss “the Frog” declined. When the Frog suggested Gary might not get his expected bonus, Gary began interviewing with rival banks, strategically leaving their business cards on the Frog’s desk as leverage. He eventually secured approximately $2.45 million – the standard 7% of his profits.
Gary’s personal life reflected his growing alienation. He purchased an expensive apartment overlooking a marina but left it bare save for a mattress and TV.
The breaking point came during a confrontation with the Frog. As his boss screamed at him over a missed meeting, Gary looked down at his shoes. His sneakers had worn away at the corners where his little toes were and he could see his socks underneath – bright red socks dotted with the logo of his favorite football team, Leyton Orient. He had become so disconnected from his everyday life that he, a millionaire trader, hadn’t noticed he’d been walking around with holes in his shoes.
“Boss, I don't think I can do it anymore,” he said suddenly. “I think I need to quit.”
To keep him from quitting, Citibank eventually offered Gary a sabbatical, working in Tokyo under his former boss Caleb. On his final day in London, Gary walked off the trading floor to applause from colleagues but never turned back to acknowledge them. His gaze was already fixed on a future away from the world of trading.
Gary had stumbled onto a secret about money. Not the kind of secret that makes you rich – though it had certainly done that – but one that made him see the world differently. While CNBC talking heads debated whether the recovery would be V-shaped or U-shaped, Gary had bet billions that it wouldn’t happen at all. The global economy, he believed, wasn’t caught in a temporary downturn. It was caught in a trap – and still is.
Gary understood that the economy couldn’t recover when spending power was being permanently drained from the middle class. The central banks would be forced to keep rates at historic lows to prevent total collapse. In Gary’s view, the economic establishment – central bankers, academic economists, and Wall Street analysts – clung to models that treat economic downturns as temporary cyclical problems, rather than permanent structural ones. Their forecasts repeatedly predict interest rate increases and returns to normality that never materialize.
Why? The central banks pump money into the financial system, ostensibly to stimulate growth. But this money never reaches ordinary people who might actually spend it. Instead, it inflates asset prices – stocks, bonds, real estate – owned predominantly by the already wealthy.
Gary saw his childhood friends back in Ilford, where the rusty lamp posts that once served as football goals still stand, increasingly devote their paychecks to rent and mortgage payments on ever-more-expensive housing. The money flows upward – from tenant to landlord, borrower to lender – through financial plumbing that Gary understood intimately. He had watched the process unfold on his Bloomberg terminal, in real time, like watching a heist in progress – one nobody else seems to notice.
So Gary made millions betting interest rates would stay near zero. When people have less and less money to spend after housing costs, the economy can’t grow. When the economy can’t grow, rates can’t rise. It’s that simple.
The result is a peculiar paradox: One kid from East London makes enough money by twenty-six to retire forever, simply by correctly anticipating that his neighbors and schoolmates will keep getting poorer.
As he flew eastward toTokyo, Gary carried this knowledge with him like contraband – a theory that explained both his meteoric rise and the gnawing emptiness that accompanied it. He was beating a game that, increasingly, he felt shouldn't be played at all.
After landing in Tokyo, Gary found himself in a surreal corporate world unlike anything he’d experienced in London. The Tokyo trading floor was eerily quiet, with low ceilings and an atmosphere of manufactured busyness. His Japanese trader colleagues had perfected the art of appearing occupied while doing almost nothing – spending hours creating spreadsheets only to delete and restart them. As one junior trader confided to Gary: “Don’t ever finish work. You finish work, you get more work to do.”
Gary was placed on the STIRT desk between Hisa, a micromanaging supervisor who constantly hovered, and an Australian junior trader. With interest rates in Japan essentially dead and minimal trading required, Gary had nothing to do. He began sleeping at his desk when Hisa was away and spending hours studying Japanese kanji – anything to fill the emptiness of his days.
Despite the change of pace, Gary’s physical decline accelerated rapidly. His weight dropped to 120 pounds. He developed acid reflux that required constant medication. And his sleep became so disrupted he often ran around the Emperor’s Palace at 3 AM. The meaninglessness of his work and the isolation from home pushed him, finally, towards a breaking point.
Six months into his Tokyo assignment, Gary informed Caleb he wanted to quit and work for charity – a move that, under a little-known contract clause, would allow him to keep his deferred compensation of approximately £1.5 million.
Caleb initially seemed understanding. But two weeks later, during a tense dinner at a ramen restaurant, Caleb transformed from mentor to intimidator. Looking directly into Gary’s eyes over steaming bowls, he threatened: “Sometimes bad things happen to good people. We can make life very difficult for you.” The threat reminded Gary of neighborhood drug dealers from his childhood – powerful men making implicit threats while maintaining plausible deniability.
This confrontation triggered Gary’s decision to fight. He secured medical leave for stress and anxiety, both a strategic move and an escape from the toxic environment. When bank management realized they couldn’t easily force him out, they subjected him to an endless series of meetings with rotating combinations of managers – alternating between intimidation tactics and false encouragement.
After his medical leave expired, the bank reassigned Gary to “Business Management,” giving him meaningless spreadsheet work in a depressing office by the recycling bins. As pressure mounted, the bank canceled his housing allowance and formally rejected his application to leave for charity work. Gary responded by sending bizarre emails to senior executives, including the CEO – some containing Mormon scripture, others featuring cryptic threats about exposing the bank’s behavior.
This unorthodox strategy coincided with the sudden firing of a senior manager. Shortly after, HR called Gary to a final meeting. They unexpectedly agreed to release him with his full deferred compensation – a surprising victory in a battle that seemed hopeless. Perhaps it was Gary’s erratic emails that made them question his stability and potential liability; maybe his persistence has simply exhausted them. He would never find out.
On his final day, Gary quietly departed the trading floor, for the last time, to zero fanfare.
Years later, in a village pub, Gary’s former colleague Billy revealed the aftermath. The day Gary left, during a monthly conference call with STIRT traders from around the world, Caleb made an announcement: “Today was Gary Stevenson's last day at Citibank.” After an uncomfortable silence, someone asked, “So who won then? Gary, or Citibank?” There was a pause, a click as Caleb unmuted his phone: “Gary won.”
Billy heard the sound of traders worldwide simultaneously muting their phones as the call erupted in laughter.
The main takeaway of this lesson to The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson is that modern finance has become disconnected from economic reality, rewarding traders who bet against shared prosperity.
Stevenson’s journey from working-class Ilford through the gleaming towers of finance reveals how the industry’s most profitable wagers are often bets on inequality and diminishing opportunities for the middle class.
His troubling insight – that central banks would keep interest rates near zero indefinitely because average people were becoming permanently poorer – made him millions even as it hollowed him from within.
In the end, his battle to escape the system with his deferred compensation intact mirrored his trading philosophy: survive long enough for your analysis to be proven right.
Today, Stevenson uses his insider knowledge to advocate for economic equality, running his YouTube channel GarysEconomics and contributing to policy debates in major media outlets.
His story illuminates not just one trader’s rise and fall, but a rigged financial system designed to funnel wealth upward while leaving ordinary people behind.
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