Day One Trader is the exclusive story of John Sussex on his journey from son of a Basildon factory worker, leaving school at 16, to successful City financier and member of the Liffe board. Providing a unique insight to this competitive and often brutal industry, readers will discover the tactics used by dealers to survive the jungle of the pits in a story that chronicles the floor banter and characters that made Liffe a global derivatives powerhouse.
Introduction:
Throughout the book there lurks the nagging trader ’ s fear that a sudden market move, a careless error, an unwise hire, could lead to bankruptcy. For John Sussex this moment came when in 1999, while his fi rm was adjusting to electronic trading, he took on a trader whose actions almost destroyed him. The episode, and the evaporation of trust it caused, are described in stomach – churning detail.
He picked himself up and went on to set up a trading arcade in his home town of Basildon, where he continued to provide the benefi t of his experience to younger traders at times when market volatility has surged in this, uncertain, decade.
This is a book primarily about the people who make a market and it was the size of their personalities that made it hard to believe that electronic trading could ever supersede them. John Sussex continues to believe that, in extreme circumstances, it is better to have a human making trading decisions than a computer trading programme.
And, chastened by his own experience perhaps, he sounds a warning about the risk of algorithmic trading models malfunctioning and putting banks and markets under dangerous stress.
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