'The most dishonest bankers walk away with the most money'

 

A former trader speaks about the 'mesmerising' trading floor and the sense of competition that pervaded everything

• This monologue is part of a series in which people across the financial sector speak to Joris Luyendijk about their working lives

For over a decade he was a trader in fixed income (bonds) and FX (currencies). An inconspicuous and energetic man in his early 30s from northern Europe, he is a fast and slightly restless talker. We are meeting at his home.

"As a trader you can be everything you want to be, at least in some ways. You sit at the wheel making decisions with very real consequences. Sell €1m of Swedish krona, and bang, see a directly observable effect on the market. The graph on your screen has a bleep on it and you know: that was me. It's real.

"In a sense you merge with the market. One time I made a mistake and sold $40m of Swedish krona in one second. The market was waiting for an announcement by the central bank and pending this, trading had virtually stopped. There were very few bids or offers; in trader terms the market puked. I suppose there were algorithms or other traders suspecting the news had leaked or somebody had knowledge or perhaps there were stops going off. I got the krona back within a few minutes and before the actual announcement, in fact at a considerable profit. Afterwards you can see your actions in the graph of [price of] the currency and think oh yes, that was my mistake.

"The shouting … well, often we are under quite a bit of pressure and screaming relieves some of that. Especially if you lost because someone failed to, say, process a request or trade fast enough. I would scream, too. There were times when I suspected the bank missed out on millions because someone didn't do as instructed. I would be screaming at that someone for half an hour, until a colleague came in and ask me to stop; there were clients over and they might get disturbed.

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It has been like that for years now. Small traders are simply used as buffers for what they do and as a source of money they are going to put in their pockets

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