Rogue Trader Books

This is the story of a currency trader at an Australian bank who lost about 350 Million...the story is very similar to Nick Leeson's Barings' bank fiasco but more exciting!!

This was it: the original game rulesbook that led to all of the editions of the "Warhammer 40,000" miniatures game that were to follow.

Things were wilder then.... rules aimed at small-unit skirmishes, more detail to weapons and equipment, you could equip your forces with just about anything you wanted.... almost a semi-role-playing feel to things. And plenty of background material for the setting, too. Great fun!

If you're looking for some of the original materials that gave rise to what has become known in some circles as "The Warhammer 40,000 Hobby" then don't pass this one up!

Rogue Trader is an interesting tale of one man's rise and fall in the fast-paced world of derivatives trading. A reader would likely need to possess an interest in business/derivatives to fully appreciate the nuts and bolts of the story. I remember Leeson needing for the Nikkei to finish at 19,000 or better for all of the options he had been selling to pay off. Would these be puts or calls? Anyone reading this review, of course, knows the answer, but I can imagine this being very dull and tedious to one with no interest in such matters. Leeson does give us an adequate explanation of the mechanics involved.

Yes, the book is a bit self-serving and bitter at times. The biting sarcasm is absolutely appropriate and probably well-deserved whomever the targets may be.

What I came away with after reading this book was that we too often assume people know more than they really do especially in the world of finance. For all of the big salaries and egos there at Barings Bank, management's financial acumen was no match for an unsupervised trading operation and systemic laziness within the bank both of which combined to bring the old merchant bank to a shameful and totally unnecessary end.

Nick Leeson was a sort of one-man Enron. He apparently was making unbelievable profits, but it was all fake.

The theme of his confessional book is that he should not have been able to get away with it as long as he did. That's true.

But there is another theme, which he does not quite seem to get. His bosses were rotten managers, willing to overlook his absurd coverup as long as he seemed to be generating huge profits for Barings Bank. But Leeson himself was a rotten manager.

He may have been a good arbitrageur trader. It is difficult to know how accurate his account is. But he continually managed himself into jams.

The first was, comparatively, trivial. A 20,000 pound trading error. It might have cost him and perhaps his staff their jobs -- although that would not necessarily have been a wise management decision by Barings -- so he covered it up. By exceeding his remit, he "traded out" of that error. Later, according to him, he repeated the trick on a much bigger scale -- 6 million pounds.

At that point, he should have asked himself: Am I really able to do this job? But that is not the sort of question gamblers ask of themselves.

And make no mistake. This is not about business. Leeson, based in Singapore, traded the difference between the prices in Singapore and Osaka of Japanese government bonds and the Nikkei stock index futures.

The futures trading was pure gambling, even if done by the rules. There is no business need for a stock index futures board. It is exactly like fan-tan -- except that nowhere could you put down a $50 million bet in fan-tan.

Leeson tells his story beautifully (helped by co-author Edward Whitley), and he attempts to make it beautiful by repeatedly asserting his love for his wife. She, however, comes across as a cipher.

Leeson would also like us to think that he has gained insight into his criminality. This seems doubtful.
When he was very far into his finagling, he writes, "I wasn't sure whether I'd committed an actual crime."

Much later, after he was trying to get himself into an English prison (the only really amusing section of the book), his lawyer comments that the only people who lost money were some bondholders. This is simply bizarre. And if Leeson feels any regret for having cost the jobs of many hundreds or thousands of honest, low level workers, he shows no sign. He is, rather, gleeful at having brought shame and ruin to his superiors.

They may have deserved a lot of that -- although being foolish is not a crime, and taking someone else's money is. That's a distinction Leeson seems not to get.

So, you are now asking yourself, what does this mean to me? Leeson has served his time and is out of prison.

Well, if George Bush has his way, your retirement nest egg is going to be tied to a stock index fund. You might want to think about that in the context of "Rogue Trader."

one question comes up in my mind after reading the book. The OTC trade that leeson did with Spear, Leeds and Kellogg. If Simon Jones(or anybody) was just a litlle bit confused, why dident somebody just make contact with SLK? Then they would have know right away that there was no trade with SLK. Just making this call would have been very simple and would have uncover the true posititon.
The fact that Coopers and lybrand,an independed auditor, dident discover the losses is strange. But well acomplished deception by Leeson was probably the explanation (and fraud).

The author appears to be one of the most character-challenged individuals of all-time, a major piece of work. By accumulating incredible unauthorized trading losses of around one billion dollars, he single-handedly brought down one of the oldest banking institutions in England, and left countless people without jobs and investments worth millions. What is absolutely amazing is the fact that while he never denies the fraud he committed, throughout the book he seems intent on blaming his superiors for their inability to discover his losses. While it is true that his superiors were so enamored of the fictitious gains his unit was reporting that they didn't want to ask hard questions, it is Mr. Leeson who is responsible for the wreckage. He never expresses any remorse whatsoever for the damage he inflicted. He was greatly perturbed because he couldn't serve his prison sentence in England, instead being returned to Singapore.

Without the proper education or pedigree, Leeson somehow managed to be promoted from a settlement clerk to running the Barings Singapore futures operation. Apparently his idea of having fun is to get plastered and moon some flight attendants in a bar, for which he was arrested by the Singapore authorities. Certainly he knew how strict laws are in Singapore, and he could have served a year in jail. It seems back in England, he hung out at pubs with friends who would unzip their pants and place their private members in the hands of unsuspecting females.

The book is of some interest to traders, because Leeson commits every cardinal sin in trading. He had no business ever setting foot near a trading floor. His biggest error was his complete inability to cut his losses, the most fundamental requirement for successful trading. He averages down or "doubles up" his positions when they are moving against him, another critical mistake. He constantly "hopes" the market will move back in his direction, and attempts to move the entire market by taking huge positions. While it is possible to move a market temporarily if one is trading large enough positions, the market will always continue on its established trend. The author continually engages in this futile strategy, at one point losing 60 million dollars in one day trying to change the direction of the market.

Finally, the book is not a terribly interesting read, in that a significant portion of it is repetitious detailing of how he conceals his mounting losses to his superiors through the use of "creative accounting". Perhaps that is why the book is now out of print. The one thing that he does care about is his wife, who at the time of publication of the book was still standing by him. If she has any good sense, she would drop him like a bad habit.

Somehow Nick Leeson ended up with the reputation as some kind of whiz kid but reading this book you get a different sense. The derivatives Mr. Leeson was trading do not seem particularly sophisticated (don't compare this to LTCM). But you wouldn't learn much about them from this book. I got the sense that Mr. Leeson was grappling with very basic financial questions. As a consequence, the book tends to be repetitive in a description of losses getting out of control and the soap opera building around that. You also have a nagging feeling that you never get the full story. However, the book is interesting where it describes the complete breakdown of financial and management controls.

The tale of Nick Leeson's catastrophic trading that brought about the collapse of Baring's bank is perhaps the most famous scandal in banking history. It is also an absolutely fascinating read. Although the film version of the story is gripping and intense, nothing can compare to the written word when portraying the terror, panic and inner turmoil that Leeson went through as his 88888 account losses spun out of control.

Far from being a cold clinical recounting of a messy financial scandal, Leeson's book is a far more personal tale. The stories about his struggles at Barings are interspersed with tales about his personal life in Singapore as well as his marriage to his wife Lisa. Indeed as his professional problems began to mount, Lisa became increasingly the rock that he clung to for salvation.

Some of the ways in which Leeson's actions went undetected are simply mind boggling. It is astonishing that some of the higher ups at Barings didn't get prosecuted for criminal negligence, but I suppose that's the way of the business world. Even if you have already seen the movie, I wouuld strongly advise you to read this fascinating book, as it is impossible to beat the written account of Leeson's roller coaster ride.

As it turns out, Nick Leeson does not seem to be a terrible guy, although he single-handedly caused the collapse of one of the oldest banks in the world in early 1995, Barings Bank. I just don't understand how he could let the 88888 account continue for so long once the losses started building. Why not confess? What started with some mistakes and an attempt to hide them soon took on a life of its own and grew out of control. Sure, Barings should have had more internal controls and could have monitored Leeson better, but to think that a young kid from suburban London would outwardly forge reports and signatures to cover his trail is unbelievable. It was fraud and he knew it.

This book is an interesting account of the collapse of one of Britain's oldest and most powerful merchant banks by Nick Leeson while trading derivatives on the Singapore, Nikkei and Osaka stock exchanges. Leeson recreated conversations and the year leading up to his capture with amazing detail, all of which makes for interesting reading. I was interested in the underlying reasons for the collapse of Barings, and thus, the book did drag on a bit. But once Leeson realized he would be discovered and fled Singapore with his wife in late February 1995, the story really got exciting. All in all, an interesting self-account of how covering one's mistakes will lead to lies upon lies, which, as it did with Leeson, will ultimately lead to disaster.

I though Nick Leeson was once a good trader who have lost it all, but I fact he was just a back ofice operator who was send to the floor of the SIMEX to take order from clients. He never make money, nor have trading strategies. He just sell put to have income to cover some handling order mistakes. After he lost to much he buy futures contract to try to come back.

If you want to know the reasons and the background of the fall of Barings bank, I recommend it. You will be surprised what were the levels of control at that time in the most respectful bank in Europe and in the world. Nowadays it's really hard to imagine that one simple back office manager could lead the whole bank giant into trashes. Good reading and relaxing with a flair of adventure.

This book wasn't as bad in terms of writing, grammar, and the like for a warhammer book, but it lacks much of what makes bad warhammer books a good read. There isn't any action. The space battles are few, and not very interesting. The intrigue is poorly done. The characters you can't seem to care about. The plot builds, but never has a pay off. There are a lot better books in the 40k setting you can buy.

The book inself was a quick read with a story that I thought was pretty good. In no other Warhammer 40K book have I seen better space/navel battles! I liked Rogue Star a bit better, but still and all and all good novel.

I though Nick Leeson was once a good trader who have lost it all, but I fact he was just a back office operator who was send to the floor of the SIMEX to take order from clients. He never make money trading, nor have trading strategies. He just sell put to have income to cover some handling order mistakes. After he lost too much he buy futures contracts to try to come back. Also note that this book is so small that you can read it in 30 minutes.

If Nick Leeson is still pondering what to do now almost ten years after his shocking trading actions that brought down one of Britain's oldest and most respectable banks he could do worse than turn his hand to thrillers. 'Rogue Trader' has the page turning, action packed qualities that put it in the same genre as writers such as Jeffrey Archer and James Patterson- the major difference being that Nick Leeson's story is true. The tale of how he secretly traded on increasingly large and reckless gambles, elaborately concealing his actions from the Barings bosses who were too arrogant and snobbish to investigate exactly what was going on in the Singapore office builds into a pulsating climax. Everyone reading this knows the ending but this doesn't spoil the drama. Some of the financial descriptions may be beyond some readers not versed in the workings of the international money markets but the book is not heavy on jargon. Certainly it is not overly complex so as to cloud the underlying story of a brash young man placed in a postion where he increasingly found he could not cope with events spiralling out of control.