Day One Trader: A Liffe Story
$16.74
Day One Trader: A Liffe Story is a first-person account of the rise, culture, transformation, and eventual disappearance of open-outcry trading at the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE). John Sussex entered LIFFE on its first trading day in 1982 and later worked as a local trader, brokerage-business owner, committee member, LIFFE board director, and participant in the development of the exchange’s electronic trading infrastructure. The book positions itself not as a conventional trading manual, but as an insider history of the exchange and the people who built its market.
The narrative follows Sussex from his early exposure to Chicago’s futures exchanges through the establishment of LIFFE, the growth of the Royal Exchange and Cannon Bridge floors, the 1987 market crash, the expansion of Sussex Futures, regulatory disputes, the Barings and Nick Leeson episode, and the competitive pressure created by electronic exchanges. Trading is examined through actual market experience: arbitrage, order execution, spread trading, liquidity provision, pit dynamics, risk limits, trader psychology, operational control, and the consequences of unmanaged speculation.
A central theme is the distinction between professional risk-taking and uncontrolled gambling. Sussex repeatedly examines discipline, judgment, market instinct, fear and greed, and the operational safeguards required around leveraged derivatives. His account of a rogue trader at Sussex Futures illustrates how failed controls and rapidly accumulating futures positions can threaten an otherwise established business, while later chapters show the challenges faced by floor traders attempting to adapt to screen-based markets.
The final part of the book documents LIFFE’s transition to Liffe Connect and Sussex’s subsequent work developing younger electronic traders. His approach emphasizes favorable risk/reward, buying value rather than indiscriminate speculation, and developing skills in scalping and spread trading. The result is both a historical record of an important period in European derivatives markets and a practical study of how trading culture, technology, psychology, and risk management interact.
✅ What You’ll Learn
- Understand how open-outcry futures and options markets operated through locals, brokers, trading pits, hand signals, order flow, and exchange procedures.
- Distinguish disciplined professional trading from speculative behavior driven by loss-chasing, ego, or uncontrolled risk.
- Recognize how arbitrage, spread trading, scalping, liquidity provision, and value-based execution were applied by professional derivatives traders.
- Interpret the importance of fear, greed, conviction, discipline, and rapid decision-making in high-pressure market environments.
- Examine how position limits, operational controls, clearing relationships, and supervision affect the survival of a leveraged trading business.
- Understand the market and institutional consequences of the 1987 crash, the Barings collapse, and rogue-trading incidents.
- Evaluate the structural advantages that caused electronic markets to displace open-outcry dealing.
- Compare the information available to floor traders through visible order flow and human behavior with the more anonymous structure of screen-based trading.
- Understand how established traders adapted their methods to electronic execution, including Euribor trading, spreads, and trading-arcade operations.
💡 Key Benefits
- Provides a practitioner-level historical view of the development of London’s financial futures market from someone involved from LIFFE’s first day.
- Connects market structure with the behavioral realities of trading under leverage and uncertainty.
- Demonstrates the consequences of weak risk controls through real institutional and trading-business events.
- Shows how technological change can alter liquidity, execution, competitive advantage, and the skills required of professional traders.
- Provides context for understanding modern electronic derivatives markets by documenting the open-outcry system they replaced.
- Offers case-based insight into trader development, business management, resilience, and adaptation without presenting the material as a mechanical trading system.
👤 Who This Book Is For
- Beginner to Intermediate traders seeking a grounded understanding of futures-market culture, exchange structure, and professional trading behavior.
- Futures and derivatives traders interested in the historical development of LIFFE and the transition from pit trading to electronic execution.
- Day traders and proprietary traders studying discipline, market psychology, risk control, and the practical distinction between trading and gambling.
- Market professionals, investors, and financial-history readers interested in exchange competition, rogue trading, market crises, and technological change.
📚 Table of Contents
- The Chicago Inferno
- A New Liffe
- What’s in a Name?
- Laws of the Jungle
- The Royal Exchange Days
- Local Heroes
- The Crash of 1987
- Cannon Bridge Boom
- The Omen
- Crimes and Misdemeanours
- Bubble
- The Liffe Board
- My Rogue Trader
- Liffe After the Floor
- The Last Hurrah
Day One Trader: A Liffe Story By John Sussex, Joe Morgan
| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Product Type | Ebook |
| Format | |
| Skill Level | Beginner to Intermediate |
| Pages | 192 |
| Publication Year | 2009 |
| Delivery | Instant Download |
11 reviews for Day One Trader: A Liffe Story
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Lilian Warner (verified owner) –
Fascinating read
Marisol Shaffer (verified owner) –
John Sussex tale of a trader is real.
Ezequiel McCormick (verified owner) –
Excellent book. Highly recommend this book for financial professionals new and old.
Wes Swanson (verified owner) –
I knew many of the characters in this book. It’s well written, accurate, amusing and a credit to John and the Sussex team. It brought back many happy memories.
Baker Pollard (verified owner) –
Nothing ground breakingly new, I’ve read similar stuff, but a great story to read, and I loved reading it. The last book I read took me 18 months over 4 holidays, because I’m not really into reading books, but this one was done in a weekend, I couldn’t put it down. Will recommend it to anyone in the City, and also friends outside.
Helen Hartman (verified owner) –
I used to work in the City of London and many of my old friends used to work on the LIFFE Floor. This book took me back to my City days. It is well written by John Sussex with honestly and passion. I even recognised some of the names of traders in the book, which I found quite amusing. If think this book would have more appeal to those who have worked in this industry and understand the way the markets work or those that have been associated with anyone on the LIFFE Floor. Loved this book. Could not put it down. I was actually quite upset when I finished it.
Jaxton Cole (verified owner) –
I loved it because it is very rare that a book on trading will make you feel nostalgic and teach you about the markets at the same time. Think I need to have a wonder round the City just to reflect on old times after picking this up, I read it in 2 days!
John’s career is the one I never had, but without the death of open-outcry and the transition to screen-based trading, self-taught buggers like me would have never had a chance…
IF YOU’RE OUT THERE JOHN, PLEASE PUT TOGETHER A MARKET WIZARDS FOR THE UK….I KEEP ASKING AND NO ONE DOES! That bloke who wrote the STIR book isn’t interested..
Sincerely
A Futures Trader
Macie Ballard (verified owner) –
Good read!
Dexter Rollins (verified owner) –
Man need to know the story to understand the future – a good book for everyone in the mderne finans world
Araceli Hale (verified owner) –
I enjoyed reading Day One Trader very much. I worked at the Chicago Board Of Trade and The Mercantile Exchange in the late 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s until my husband (mentioned in the book) went to trade at the LIFFE. He passed away in 2000 shortly after he stopped working at the exchange and we returned to the states. Ours sons were only 2 and 5 at the time so I purchased a copy for both of them to read to have an understanding of what their father did for a living. For me it was like a trip down memory lane with all the familiar names.It gives a good overview of what it was like to work and trade on the exchange floors.
Kenzo Dalton (verified owner) –
Although this is a book about the old London trading pits, since this is Amazon.com, most of you reading will be Yanks and more familiar with CME or CBOT pits in Chicago..
Awesome book describing both the general day to day life in futures pits, although main focus is on the London LIFFE, it mentions the Singapore SIMEX (where Nick Neeson blew up Barings bank overnight, UK’s oldest bank) and also mentions Chicago pits
Ultimately both US pits and UK trading pits shared the same fate, as electronic trading took over. The war stories and day-to-day life on pits in different continents were very similar.. and anyone familiar with Chicago pits will immediately find many parallels to London.
The author started on the LIFFE floor on day one they opened in 1982 (hence the title) and he was there till the very end 98/2000. He details the changes that took place and mentions the unique characters and comical moments of working in this environment, where business meetings were held in local pubs (bars), and quick witted traders had footballer-celebrity-lifestyles.
I am an ‘electronic’ trader, I have several friends who were pit traders in London though I was myself too young and the pits had closed by the time I started trading, I felt like I missed out on an amazing era.. now I can only read about it!
Personally for me, as a new breed of trader, I felt I’d been filled in with an important history lesson about my line of business and also lessons on how our world can suddenly change.
Overall: Great book. Entertaining Definitely worth a read.. and nicely written.