Ever heard of a guy who got rich by betting that everyone else would get poor? It sounds like the plot of a cynical Wall Street thriller, but for Gary Stevenson, it was just Tuesday.
In the late 2000s, while most of us were reeling from the global financial collapse, a kid from East London was sitting in a glass tower at Citibank, staring at nine screens and realizing something terrifying. He saw that the "recovery" everyone kept talking about wasn't coming. Not for the average person, anyway. He realized the system was rigged to funnel money upward, and he decided to bet his life on that grim reality.
The result? He became the bank’s most profitable trader. Then, he walked away from it all to tell us why we're screwed.
What is The Trading Game Gary Stevenson actually about?
If you’ve seen the title popping up on your feed lately, you might think it’s a "how-to" guide for day trading. It’s not. Honestly, if you’re looking for "10 tips to beat the market," this book will probably piss you off.
The Trading Game Gary Stevenson is a memoir. But it's a messy, fast-paced, and deeply uncomfortable one. It follows Gary from his roots in Ilford—where he was taking showers with a rubber tube attached to a kitchen tap—to the London School of Economics (LSE), and finally to the STIRT (Short Term Interest Rate Trading) desk at Citibank.
The "game" in the title refers to two things:
- The actual card game: A high-pressure simulation Citibank ran at LSE to find "natural" traders. While the "posh kids" were trying to solve the game with complex math, Gary won by bluffing, distracting people, and basically being a street-smart shark. That win got him his internship.
- The global economy: The much larger, more dangerous game where trillions of dollars are moved daily based on interest rate swaps.
Gary’s "big secret" wasn't some complex algorithm. It was the realization that wealth inequality is a terminal feedback loop. While central bankers in 2011 were predicting that interest rates would soon rise because "the economy is recovering," Gary looked at his old neighbors in East London and realized nobody had any money to spend. If nobody spends, the economy doesn't grow. If it doesn't grow, interest rates stay at zero. He bet on zero. He won millions.
The "Betting on Disaster" Controversy
It’s easy to paint Gary as a villain, and he’s the first to admit it. In his book, he describes himself and his colleagues as "maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths."
He once made $11 million for Citibank in a single day after the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima disaster in Japan. Why? Because the disaster caused interest rates to drop. In the world of the trading game Gary Stevenson, someone else’s worst day is your best P&L statement.
Did he really make $35 million?
There's some beef here. Gary claims he was the "best trader in the world" at Citibank in 2011, bringing in roughly $35 million in profit. However, some of his former colleagues have gone to the Financial Times to dispute this, claiming his numbers are inflated or that other desks made more.
Does the exact dollar amount matter? Kinda. But the core point remains: he made enough to become a millionaire by his mid-20s while the rest of the world was drowning in austerity.
Why he finally quit (The Golden Handcuffs)
You’d think making millions would be the dream. But for Gary, it turned into a nightmare. He describes a descent into a mental health crisis—waking up at 2:30 AM to run on a treadmill, cycling to work in a daze, and watching his weight drop to 8.5 stone (about 120 lbs).
He wanted out. But Citibank didn't want him to leave.
This is where the book gets weirdly corporate-thriller. Most of his wealth was tied up in "deferred stock"—bonuses he couldn't touch for years. If he quit, he lost the money. He tried to use a "charity clause" to leave, but the bank blocked it. They even shipped him off to Tokyo to see if a change of scenery would fix his "disillusionment."
It didn't. He eventually managed to extricate himself with his cash intact, but the experience left him convinced that the financial system isn't just broken—it's predatory.
Garynomics: The takeaway for the rest of us
Since leaving the City in 2014, Gary has traded his Bloomberg terminal for a YouTube channel called GarysEconomics. He’s not just "another rich guy talking." He has a very specific, very bleak theory that he calls "Garynomics."
Basically, he argues that we are in an economic death spiral:
- The Rich Get Richer: They have a "lower marginal propensity to consume." They don't buy more bread; they buy more assets (houses, stocks).
- Asset Inflation: This drives up the price of everything you need to survive.
- The Death of the Middle Class: Ordinary people have to sell their assets and go into debt just to pay rent to the people who bought the houses.
- The Interest Trap: Wealth flows from the poor/middle class to the rich via interest and rent, making the rich even richer.
He’s currently one of the most vocal advocates for a Wealth Tax. He argues that taxing income (work) is useless if the real wealth is sitting in assets that just keep ballooning in value.
Is it worth reading?
Honestly, if you want to understand why your rent is so high while the stock market is at an all-time high, yeah. It’s a gut-punch of a book.
It’s not perfect. Gary has a massive chip on his shoulder about "posh people," and he can come across as incredibly arrogant. He describes one coworker as having the "constant air of a 16-year-old trying to buy vodka." He’s brutal. But that’s what makes it feel human. It’s not a sanitized corporate memoir vetted by a PR team. It’s a confession.
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Actionable Insights from the Trading Game
You probably aren't going to go out and trade a trillion dollars in interest rate swaps tomorrow. But there are real lessons here:
- Watch the Assets, Not the News: Central bankers and "experts" are often wrong because they rely on outdated models. Gary won by looking at who actually holds the cash.
- Understand the "Zero Rate" Trap: We lived through a decade of near-zero interest rates because the "real" economy was too weak to handle anything else. As rates rise and fall now, the volatility is where the big players make their move.
- Question the Narrative: If the news says the economy is "booming" but everyone you know is struggling, the "boom" is likely happening in asset prices, not wages.
- The Importance of a Wealth Tax: Regardless of your politics, Gary’s data on how wealth concentration kills consumer demand is hard to ignore.
The story of the trading game Gary Stevenson isn't just about one guy getting rich. It's a warning that the game is still being played, and most of us aren't even at the table. We're the stakes.
If you want to dive deeper into the mechanics of how this works, your next step is to look into his YouTube breakdowns on the "Wealth Secret"—it's the most straightforward explanation of how the rich stay rich during a crisis.