His secret is understanding that interest rates will be close to zero forever, because the world is hopelessly unequal, the economy will always be in crisis and the rich will get richer. Most people seem to be impressed; but then they would be — it is, after all, Stevenson’s book.
Along the way, Stevenson acquires and breaks up with a girlfriend, nicknamed Wizard, who is not impressed, and keeps telling Stevenson that if he doesn’t like his job he should quit. He can’t quite get himself to take that advice, and having conquered London FX swaps, Stevenson is sent to the backwater of the Tokyo office, and buried under layers of managers. It’s frankly a hard-to-explain transition for a kid who is supposed to have been, as Stevenson claims, Citi’s “most profitable trader” (an unverifiable and eyebrow-raising assertion) and makes the reader wonder what might have been skipped…
