Liam Vaughan Knihy

The riveting story of a trading prodigy who amassed $70 million from his childhood bedroom takes a dramatic turn when the US government accuses him of triggering an unprecedented market collapse. On May 6, 2010, financial markets worldwide plummeted without warning, resulting in a trillion-dollar loss in just five minutes—an event known as the Flash Crash. This unprecedented drop left experts baffled as share values rebounded in less than half an hour. Navinder Singh Sarao, a seemingly unlikely figure from a working-class neighborhood in West London, was a gifted trader who approached the markets like a video game. By thirty, he had transitioned from London's "trading arcades" to operating from home, raking in profits until high-frequency traders began to encroach on his earnings. In response, Nav devised his own trading system, which initially proved successful—until the FBI came knocking in 2015. Opinions on Sarao vary widely; some see him as a villain emblematic of a flawed financial system, while others view him as a folk hero challenging Wall Street's dominance. This real-life financial thriller reveals the intricate narrative behind a market crash, an extensive investigation into international fraud, and the enigmatic man at its center.

"In the midst of the financial crisis, Tom Hayes and his network of traders and brokers from Wall Street's leading firms set to work engineering the biggest financial conspiracy ever seen. As the rest of the world burned, they came together on secret chat rooms and late night phone calls to hatch an audacious plan to rig Libor, the 'world's most important number' and the basis for $350 trillion of securities from mortgages to loans to derivatives. Without the persistence of a rag-tag team of investigators from the U.S., they would have got away with it. [This book] is the inside story of the Libor scandal, told through the journey of the man at the centre of it: a young, scruffy, socially awkward misfit from England whose genius for math and obsessive personality made him a trading phenomenon, but ultimately paved the way for his own downfall."-- Provided by publisher